UC-NRLF 


L'l  B  R  ARY 

OF   THE 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA. 

OIKT    OK 


,  189  ./.. 

Shelf  No... 


Received  . 
A  ccessions 


/  \ 


PROBLEMS 


OF 


LJFE 


BY 


MORRISON  I.  SWIFT 


ASHTABULA,  OHIO. 

PUBLISHED  BY  THE  AUTHOR. 

1891. 


Jhe 


ef  /Morrison 
iUfl  //  7 


SOCIAL  UNIVERSITY  MONOGRAPHS. 

I.  The  Plan  of  a  Social  University. 

II.  The  Old  and  the  New  Life.     (Published  also  in 

the  present  volume.) 
Price  of  each,  .  %  20 

PROBLEMS  OF  THE  NEW  LIFE. 
Price,  in  cloth,     ...  f  1  00 

The  same  in  paper,  ...  50 


PRESSWOKK  BY  DEMOCRATIC  STANDARD, 
ASHTABULA,  O. 


CONTENTS. 


i. 

PAGE. 

THE  SOCIAL  ORDEAL  OF  CHRISTIANITY  -      1-16 

II. 

THE  OLD  AND  THE  NEW  Lin-:  17-44 

III. 
EDUCATION  AND  POWER  -  -  45-68 

I.  Science  and  Vitality. 

II.  The  Increase  of  Power. 

III.  How  to  Make  tin-  Schools  Serve  Us. 

IV. 
Tin:  Kx TENSION  OF  CULTURE  68-84 

1.  University  Extension. 

2.  The  Sociological  Function  of  Universities. 

3.  The  Endowment  of  Innovation. 

V. 
NATIONALISM  -  85-94 

VI. 
FRAGMENTS  AND  RANDOM  LETTERS  94-103 

1.  A  Defense  of  Strikes. 

2.  Shall  We  Believe  in  College  Professors? 
.'*>.      M  Dreams  " 

4.  Social  Responsibilities. 
.").      The  Educated    Man. 

VII. 

Tin:    AWAKENED    FARMERS  -   103-110 

VIII. 
SOME  THOUGHTS  on   TIM;   GROWING   KEVOM-TION  -      111-126 


Some  portions  of  "  The  Old  and  The  New  Life  "  have  already  appeared 
in  The,  Open  Court,  and  through  the  courtesy  of  that  journal  I  reprint  the 
section  entitled  "The  Sociological  Function  of  Universities.  " 

On  pages  29  and  30  I  have  described  the  unique  course  of  a  business 
firm  who  voluntarily  raised  the  wages  of  their  employes.  The  case  is 
stronger  in  their  favor  than  I  have  there  stated  it,  since  it  is  also  the  prac- 
tice of  this  firm  to  divide  ten  per  cent  of  its  profits  among  its  employes 
annually. 


The  Social  Ordeal  of  Christianity, 

BY  MORRISON  I.  SWIFT. 


I. 

Dr.  Ernst  Barth  has  written  a  book  of  somewhat  general  interest.* 
It  is  a  review  of  the  condition  of  society,  and  some  hard  questions  about 
existing  institutions  are  asked  in  it.  The  prayer,  "Thy  Kingdom  Come," 
he  says,  is  offered  every  Sunday  in  the  churches  and  daily  in  the  schools 
and  at  home.  In  this  manner  we  have  been  praying  for  eighteen  hun- 
dred years.  But  when  is  the  Kingdom  to  come,  and  where  are  even  the 
simplest  beginnings  of  it?  The  thought  must  give  us  shame  that  even  in 
Christian  countries  the  social  requirements  laid  upon  men  in  this  petition 
from  Christ  have  received  almost  no  attention.  And  there  is  not  the  ex- 
cuse that  the  powerful  of  the  earth  have  opposed  the  religion  that  offers 
this  prayer;  they  have  long  been  its  protectors.  Yet  when  we  look  for  the 
fruits  of  our  religion  and  consider  withal  the  social  distress,  we  must 
recouni/e  that  we  have  not  brought  it  to  much  more  than  an  empty,  arro- 
gant word-Christianity,  and  that  we  are  not  worthy  to  bear  the  name  of 
Christ. 

Are  the  causes  ascertainablc  ?  Consider  the  poor.  What  can  be 
hoped  of  people  so  oppressed  with  want  and  eare  and  labor  that  they  have 
neither  time,  repose,  nor  collectedness  to  think  of  the  higher  problems  of 
humanity?  Indeed  one  who,  year  in  and  year  out,  in  the  midst  of  cruel 
distress,  can  only  think  about  the  scanty  support  of  his  family,  and  who 
sees  his  children  starve  and  his  wife  pine  away,  will  not  have1  much  time  or 
strength  to  labor  lor  the  Kingdom  of  God.  Material  things  engross  the 
attention  of  t  hose  \vhoare  prosperous;  scholars  and  specialists  feel  the 
pressing  demands  of  their  profession.  Meanwhile  human  misery,  bodily 
and  moral,  persists. 

*      It 'n-  Hi-form  ilt-r    (it-xclltcli l«ift    ilurch     \t  iihi-lrhn ny    </<•*    (;<-in<  i n<l<  ir<*(i,x     hi    Sinai.    s,-finl< 
null  Kin-la-,      von  |)r     Kni-t   Htirlti. 


In  the  opinion  of  this  writer  the  saving  power  is  still  Christianity,  but 
Christianity  knowing  that  the  kingdom  of  God  was  to  come  on  this  earth. 
His  plan  of  reform  and  revitalization  proposes  no  departure  from  existing 
and  accepted  ground  principles. 

There  is  a  different  view.  It  may  be  that  not  many  people  are  yet 
aware  that  bodies  of  men  and  women  in  New  York,  Chicago  and  some 
other  cities  have  joined  themselves  together  in  the  name  of  a  new  religion. 
Certain  it  is,  at  all  events,  that  the  import  of  this  action  is  scarcely  appre- 
ciated. Where  do  the  leaders  of  this  movemont  stand?* 

In  consonance  with  the  opinion  already  cited  they  recognize  the  .evils 
of  the  present  society  as  few  not  actually  suffering  from  them  have  yet 
done.  They  reject,  without  compromise,  the  too  prevalent  thought  'that 
the  varying  lot  of  men  is  ordered  by  Divine  Providence,  that  the 
social  order  which  exists  with  its  classes  and  distinctions,  has  a 
Divine  sanction.'  They  commit  themselves  with  absolute  assurance  to  the 
thought  'that  the  Perfect  Order  of  things,  which  Omnipotence  was  to  pro- 
duce for  us  in  another  world,  we  are  ourselves  are  to  create  here.'  With 
a  clearness  of  conviction  that  may  well  cause  our  cheap  moralities  to 
shudder,  they  give  utterance  to  the  deep  meaning  of  human  responsibility 
now.  "A  perfect  order  of  society,  how  can  it  ever  dawn  on  the  earth, 
save  as  man  sets  his  heart  upon  it  and  determines  that  it  shall  bo?" 
The  present  age  "  is  not  inclined  to  accept  the  order  of  human  life  as 
it  is,  but  to  try  it  and  test  it  by  a  thought  of  what  it  ought  to  be,  to  see 
whether  it  meets  the  wants,  the  rights  of  human  beings  and  of  all  human 
beings;  and  it  is  mightily  inclined  to  believe,  too,  that  the  satisfaction  of 
these  wants  and  the  doing  justice  to  those  rights,  need  not  be  delayed  to  a 
future  world,  but  may  be  undertaken  here,  and  that  by  no  other  power 
than  ourselves." 

To  this  task  Christianity  is  unequal.  Protestantism  "has  not  given  us 
any  new  faith  such  as  the  world  wants."  'It  has  seemed  to  regard  moral 
idealism  ns  exhausted  in  the  statements  of  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount.' 
'  An  era  of  social  righteousness  is  the  want  of  the  world,  and  this  is  what 
Protestantism  has  not  given  us,  what  it  has  apparently  had  no  aim  of  giv- 
ing us.  '  And  the  religion  that  declares  these  principles  fetters  itself  to  no 

*    The  following  quotation)?  are    from  two   piiuted   lectures  of   Mr  W.  M.  Salter,  of   Chicago, 
entitled  "Why  Unitarianiam  Does  not  Satisfy  Us."1  and  -'The  Success  and  Failure  of  Protestantism." 


theology.  Its  last  and  deepest  utterance  is:  u  Perfect  freedom  for  the 
mind,  a  righteous  life  rather  than  any  creed,  and  the  worth,  the  sacredness 
of  human  beings.  " 

Thus  fn»m  t  \vo  very  different  sides  we  find  a  recognition  of  the  great 
wrongs  existing  in  society,  and  of  the  inadequacy,  hitherto,  of  the  efforts 
of  all  organizations  for  lifting  mankind.  They  agree  no  further.  One 
awaits  help  and  conquering  life  from  a  reanimated  Christianity;  the  other 
will  work  new  veins  of  moral  inspiration. 

There  are  many,  no  doubt,  who  view  the  Ethical  movement  as  they 
would  a  new-born  sect  within  the  church.  They  see  in  it  no  great  signifi- 
cance. To  us  it  is  one  of  the  way-marks  of  the  time.  It  is  one  of  the 
most  decisive  expressions  of  powerfully  moving  tendencies  that  we  have 
yet  beheld.  It  contains  ideas  to  which  men  must  listen  from  this  time  on, 
and  that  will  sooner  or  later  reform  conduct.  To  say  the  very  least  about 
it,  it  is  a  protestation  against  the  exaggerated  emphasis  of  ideas  that 
will  every  day  mean  less  to  men,  and  that  already  confuse  and  mystify  in- 
stead of  helping  such  as  thirst  after  excellence.  And  it  would  appear  that 
tin-  right  and  abiding  attitude  toward  the  movement  is  not  the  attitude  of 
silent  indifference,  or  of  condemnation  for  its  standing  toward  Christianity, 
but  acceptance  of  the  hint  its  mere  existence  gives,  and  probing  of  the 
tendencies  that  brought  it  into  being.  And  since  it  does  but  repeat  the 
arraignment  of  inefliciency  against  the  religion  of  the  day  brought  by  those 
in  no  sense  hostile  to  it,  but  holding  it  as  the  light  of  the  world,  there 
remains  no  release  from  the  constraint  of  its  message. 

It  cannot  be  denied  that  these  .criticisms  of  what  now  passes  for 
Christianity  disclose  the  main  causes  of  its  weakness.  For  reasons  in  part 
doctrinal,  Christianity  has  lost  faith  in  its  power  to  regenerate  the  world 
and  its  attempts  are  responsively  feeble.  This  we  say  with  full  recognition 
of  the  noble  efforts  of  individuals  scattered  here  and  there.  It  is  to 
Christianity  as  a  whole  that  we  refer,  and  its  efforts  are  singularly  inade- 
quate to  the  needs  of  the  day,  and  wholly  out  of  proportion  to  its  resources. 
It  would  appear  that  the  idea  of  bringing  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven  upon 
earth  is  not  one  of  the  things  in  which  it  believes.  Those  who  believe  in 
the  greatness  of  Jesus  declare  this  perfidy  to  him.  But  the  message  of 
cheer  from  t  lie  doctrinarics  is  that  the  world  must  gird  itself  to  patience 
and  wait  improvement  through  supernatural  interferences  of  Christ.  A 
depart  ure  so  gross  as  t  his  l>v  dogmatists  from  the  reasonable  level  of  natural 


cause  and  effect  is  the  signal  for  a  reaction  of  humanity  against  theology 
and  for  this  reason  the  Ethical  Culture  movement  has  arisen  among  us.  It 
stands  for  a  simple  yet  final  principle.  No  man^  it  says,  shall  hereafter 
call  himself  Christian,  or  religious,  or  moral,  whose  life  object  is  less  than 
the  enlargement  of  mankind.  And  before  this  criticism  our  theological 
Christianity  is  impotent.  For  it  permits  men  whose  life  ends  are  selfish 
and  who  indulge  in  luxury  and  display  at  the  cost  of  suffering  and  want  in 
those  whom  Christ  designated  as  brothers  to  call  themselves  Christians  and 
in  startling  defiance  of  old-time  morality  to  announce  themselves  religion- 
ists. 

But  religion  is  not  going  one  or  a  very  few  steps  of  the  way  and  then 
stopping;  it  is  going  the  whole  way,  and  the  merit  of  the  Ethical  Culture 
leaders  is  that  they  have  seen  this.  They  practically  say,  we  have  had  the 
name  of  religion  trying  to  do  the  work  of  religion  for  a  long  time;  let  us 
now  see  what  the  reality  can  do  for  the  world.  Against  the  dove-tailed 
mechanism  of  religion  this  charge  is  not  incorrect.  If  any  one  imagines 
that  it  is,  let  him  reflect  that  the  supporters  of  the  Christian  organization 
possess  and  control  the  bulk  of  the  material  resources  of  the  world,  and  use 
them  mostly  for  their  individual  pleasure.  In  denying  that  this  practice  is 
compatible  with  religion  the  Ethical  Culturists  are  giving  language  to  the 
awakening  moral  sentiment  of  our  generation.  Many  people  are  now 
thinking  that  if  Christians  would  divert  their  resources  from  pleasing  selfish 
channels  to  the  help  of  the  world,  the  Kingdom  of  God,  in  which  they  have 
so  little  earthly  confidence,  might  actually  begin  to  appear. 

The  recognition  that  help  must., come  through  our  own  efforts  does  not 
deny  God.  It  is  the  only  discerning  and  unselfish  obedience.  It  perceives 
that  God  works  through  us  and  not  over  our  heads.  Upon  the  individual 
it  places  the  mighty  responsibility  of  being  wrought  with  by  God  for  the 
world's  renewing,  God  being  the  vital  fire  in  us. 

A  second  reason  why  a  new  movement  is  now  necessary  is  because  the 
Christian  organization  has  spent  so  great  a  portion  of  its  strength  in  con- 
tests within  itself,  and  in  needless  conflict  with  speculative  opponents  out- 
side, when  the  thing  to  be  done  was  to  unite  its  energies  to  subdue  the 
world  to  the  principles  and  spirit  of  its  originator.  The  Christian  church 
has  been  anxious  to  conquer  the  world  to  technicalities  and  interpretations, 
when  before  it,  in  grand  outlines,  stood  the  character  of  its  founder,  expres- 
sive of  duties  so  difficult  that  the  performance  of  them  would  tax  all 


ordinary  powers  it'  subtle  doctrine  and  new  readings  and  metaphysical 
chimeras  and  creations  were  given  a  long  truce.  Yet  this  great  character 
stands  there  neglected  and  his  modern  disciples  contest  among  poor 
mediaeval  dogmas  find  the  dry,  unhallowed  bones  of  a  fabricated  salvation. 
Have  not  people  enough  gone  astray  through  this  grotesque  and  pitiful 
blundering?  And  will  deliverance  of  this  world  ever  come  through  those 
who  cannot  abate  their  advocacy  of  hypotheses  about  some  other  world? 

Kven  roday  the  Church  dreams  of  converting  the  world  to  the  Chris- 
tianity of  dogmas  and  fables.  And  having  nothing  but  this  perversion  to 
proffer,  the  church  is  weak  for  the  great  crisis  impending  and  already  here. 
Into  this  crisis  it  glides  sleeping  and  futile.  In  its  satisfied  monopoly  of 
the  path  of  life  it  postpones  the  single  act  by  which  it  can  save  itself  and 
the  world,  its  own  regeneration.  For  in  truth,  the  Christian  Church  stands 
in  need  of  moral  transformation,  at  a  moment  too  when  a  great  organ i/a- 
tion  rightly  inspired  could  tide  society  over  the  grave  dangers  to  an  ex- 
panded life.  And  yet  it  holds  the  key  to  the  situation  still;  it  can  still  do 
something  or  nothing  at  its  choice;  though  how  long  the  privilege  shall  be 
vouchsafed  when  the  irresistible  progressive  tendency  of  the  time  requires 
that  something  not  vet  undertaken  shall  be  done,  no  one  can  sav.  lJut 
very  few  will  believe  this  and  we  shall  be  called  infatuated. 

Here  again  the  founders  of  the  Ethical  Culture  organization  have  rec- 
Ognized  the  progressive  tendency  of  the  time  and  placed  themselves  in  the 
current  with  it.  They  build  on  the  fact  that  the  world  is  entering  a  new 
period  of  its  history. 

There  is  a  third  justification  for  the  new  movement.  The  masses  are 
being  repelled  from  the  church  and  the  popular  religion.  Defection  is  an 
inevitable  accompaniment  of  the  deepening  intelligence.  The  church  is 
somewhat  charitable,  but  even  its  benevolences  move  with  weighted  step. 
Whatever  interest  it  has  in  the  laboring  classes  beyond  the  accustomed 
contribution  is  incidental  and  surprising.  The  admired  policy  of  our  theo- 
logical era  is  acquisition  by  whatever  means  the  courts  do  not  scourge,  arid 
a  visible  conferring  of  minor  benefits  in  the  glamour  of  deceptive  gener- 
osity. Thereby  is  acquired  the  subsequent  luxury  of  virtue.  It  assumes 
to  give  its  own.  But  if  rights  were  conferred  instead  of  charities,  gifts 
might  cease.  The  church  has  not  accepted  for  its  mission  the  elevation  of 
all  the  inferior  ones  to  an  actual  brotherhood  with  the  best  and  to  the 
unequivocal  exercise  of  every  right.  The  masses  are  at  length  learning 


the  depth  of  this  evangelical  virtue.  They  discover  but  one  business 
method  for  all,  and  that  religionists  are  not  less  skillful  in  its  use  than 
.others.  They  know  that  in  the  exercise  of  this  method  the  commonest 
principles  of  morality  are  habitually  disregarded,  and  they  cannot  see  that 
wrong  is  converted  into  right  by  technical  disguises  or.  legal  escapements. 
For  these  reasons  they  discard  the  church  and  its  pretensions.  We  must 
check  the  progress  of  enlightenment  if  their  movement  away  from  the 
church  in  its  present  insufficiency  is  to  cease.  Religion  may  momentarily 
suffer  in  the  transition.  When  an  uncultured  person  abandons  a  svstem  of 
dogmas  he  may  disport  himself  as  a  truant  from  moral  law.  But  society 
may  hold  itself  happy  if  this  is  the  only  price  paid  to  recall  the  church  from 
fictions  to  realities,  or  to  demonstrate  the  necessity  of  a  new  church,  if  the 
old  one  is  deaf  to  the  voice  of  the  times.  And  the  departure  of  the  masses 
will  be  an  act  of  worship  and  a  prayer  answerable  on  earth. 

We  return  to  the  point  that  remains  central.  Religion  may  be  much 
more  but  it  cannot  be  less  than  the  lifting  up  of  humanity,  and  this 
achievement  involves  more  than  the  chiefs  and  elders  of  the  church  are 
willing  to  undertake.  It  requires  sacrifices,  and  the  people  who  name 
themselves  after  the  man  who  made  unusual  sacrifices,  and  discredit  those 
who  cry  not  their  allegiance  to  him  in  the  market  places,  are  ready  to  show 
that  the  practical  teachings  of  this  ancient  person  do  not  apply  literally 
now-a-days  and  to  them. 

We  hardly  care  to  multiply  the  evidences  of  Christian  unfaithfulness. 
But  while  Christianity  forbids  preference  of  persons,  aristocratic  discrimina- 
tion is  a  prominent  characteristic  of  the  Protestant  church.  The  rich  and 
the  poor  mingle  not  together.  A  commonplace  of  the  day  is  the  discom- 
fiture of  the  poor  at  the  shrines  of  the  rich.  Persons  of  influence  and 
deportment,  rich  owners  of  the  house  of  God,  have  been  made  committees 
to  welcome  the  poor  and  set  them  at  ease  before  Deity,  but  even  this 
cordiality  fails.  The  poor  will  not  come,  and  the  only  discovered  way  to 
get  religion  to  them  is  to  build  chapels  where  they  can  worship  alone. 
Thev  may  have  caught  the  secret  that  numbers  of  the  churches  are  hardly 
more  than  close  corporations  for  the  satisfaction  of  social  instincts.  The 
line  of  exclusion  is  the  poverty  line. 

Patronage  is  the  relation  of  the  entempled  rich  toward  the  unchurched 
poor.  Many  people  there  arc  who  could  easily  and  willingly  be  poor,  but 


who  cannot  with  equanimity  endure  suggestions  of  inferiority.  Submis- 
si  >;i  t  >  th  MII  is  the  death  of  self-respect.  Their  instinct  to  reject  patronage 
awakens  admiration,  yet  this  patronage,  this  travesty  on  the  manner  of 

j,  comes  masquerading  in  the  person  of  his  followers.  It  is  subver- 
sive of  the  innermost  intention  of  Christianity.  Christianity  sought  to 
cultivate  breadth  an  1  depth  of  character;  the  unutterable  dignity,  the 

iclosed  value  of  the  individual,  were  its  vital  and  perpetual  themes; 
it  saw  through  stations  in  life  and  possessions  and  spoke  of  them  as  husks; 
it  perceived  the,  majesty  of  manhood  and  laid  its  reverence  there.  Such 
was  Christianity.  It  inspired  by  the  infusion  of  self-respect.  Modern 
(  MM -istianit y  is  different;  it  has  become  astigmatic;  it  lays  its  reverence  not 
on  manhood  but  on  money. 

Without  doubt  the  Kihical  societies  appear  at  an  opportune  moment. 
Th '-v  start  with  immense  advan':ij  is,  Thev  are  hampered  by  none  of  the 
long  traditions  of  unfaithfulness  and  injustice  that  prejudice  the  people 
aii-.ii.'ist  the  church  and  diminish  the  effectiveness  of  even  its  purest  effort*. 
Thev  are  free  from  tli3  tremendous  internal  Weight  of  practical  conserva- 
tism which  the  church  must  lift  before  it  can  meet  the  present  crisis,  a  con- 
servatism that  signifies  more  than  simple  indifference  or  outright  disinclina- 
tion to  the  reforms  upon  which  success  is  distinctly  conditioned;  whose 
root  lies  in  the  fact  that  the  church  is  still  the  slumbering  place  of  so  large 
a  number  whose  lives  are  devoted  to  doing  the  things  that  drive  the  masses 
out.  and  who  are  resolute  enemies  of  the  necessary  reform.  Free  from 
this  perplexing  internal  contradiction,  with  the  masses  of  men  adrift  and 
and  want  inn'  refuse,  a  singularly  favorable  opportunity  offers  itself  to  the 
rOthical  organi/atious  to  do  a  vast  service.  They  are  the  need  of  the 
moment;  maybe  they  will  become  the  church  of  the  future,  not  for  the  poor 
only,  but  for  those  not  caring  for  human  distinctions,  who  prefer  humanity 
to  aristocracy,  and  who  see  their  own  needs  and  rights  reflected  in  every 
other  man.  But  to  Kthical  societies  will  be  applied  the  same  tests  that 
condemn  the  prosperous  church.  In  the  hour  that  thev  temporize  and 
hearken  to  the  voice  of  the  oppressors  of  the  poor,  and  seek  for  standing 
am  on  LI"  the  influential  of  the  land,  or  desert  the  province  of  moral  enlight- 
enment for  the  uprearing  of  pleasing  institutions,  their  singular  usefulness 
will  be  past,  sm,l  they  will  take  rank  among  the  agencies  that  are  more 
sensitive  to  the  whisperings  Of  temporal  comfort  and  prudetice  than  to  the* 


8 
II. 

The  important  question,  then,  is,  what  course  shall  the  church  pursue 
in  this  emergency,  and  how  may  it  hope  to  maintain,  purify  and  extend  its 
influence.  We  may  venture  the  conviction  that  it  can  sustain  itself  only 
through  an  unmistakable  practical  demonstration  of  the  principles  of  its 
founder.  It  must  show  that  it  means  seriously  to  execute  the  commands 
laid  upon  it,  and  it  must  take  up  this  work  with  so  much  earnestness 
that  the  need  of  other  organizations  to  save  men  will  cease.  It  must  be- 
lieve that  this  world  can  be  regenerated,  it  must  see  that  this  is  its  business, 
it  must  throw  its  entire  energy  into  this  great  task.  It  must  prove  its  truth 
not  so  much  by  theoretical  controversy  as  by  what  it  does.  By  a  radical 
transformation  of  itself  it  must  show  that  in  reality,  as  well  as  in  precept,  it 
believes  in  the  intrinsic  equality  of  all  men.  Unless  these  changes  occur 
the  Protestant  church  will  continue  steadily  to  lose  its  hold  upon  the  minds 
of  men. 

It  is  just  now  important  for  society  that  the  church  take  this  high 
practical  course,  for  the  social  crisis  can  only  be  met  by  the  united  exertion 
of  all  who  realize  the  value  of  past  human  achievements  and  care  to  pre- 
serve them.  It  is  important  for  the  church  itself  that  it  manifest  a  re- 
vived and  convincing  loyalty  to  its  practical  principles,  and  develop  them 
to  meet  the  requirements  of  modern  emergencies.  For  the  fact  is  not  to 
be  blurred  or  evaded  that  theology  and  argumentation  can  no  longer  take 
the  place  of  action.  Where  the  church  is  made  an  asylum  for  those  who 
desire  to  experience  security  of  soul  without  materially  bettering  their  lives 
it  may,  in  numbers,  increase.  In  this  numerical  absorption  it  is  customary 
for  the  church  to  see  the  spread  of  religion.  It  resembles  rather  the  ex- 
tension of  fashion  and  conformity,  and  a  deeper  diagnosis  would  see  in  it 
the  likeness  of  a  deadly  disease. 

Storms  of  experience  and  discovery  have  lately  swept  through  human 
consciousness  and  altered  its  character,  but  the  church  has  no  recent  chart, 
and  wise  men  are  apprehensive  of  resigning  themselves  unreservedly  to  its 
pilotage.  The  emphasis  of  Christianity  is  upon  a  life  to  corne;  its  theory  of 
salvation  refers  to  future  existence;  its  principal  test  of  salvation  is  the 
adoption  of  a,  theory  relating  to  the  future.  But  elsewhere  the  re-action 
against  the  improper  use  of  theory  is  making  rapid  way  and  with  clear- 
thinking,  straight-seeing  men  this  life  is  beginning  to  get  its  dues.  Re- 


Union,  they  contend,  has  for  its  deepest  purpose  the  increase  of  life,  and 
primarily  of  life  here  and  now.  The  postponement  in  theory  or  practice  of 
the  present  life  to  the  future  places  religion  awry  with  the  best  tendencies 
of  the  modern  world.  Life  is  ours  in  this  world  and  it  is  and  must  he  our 
great  concern;  the  true  purpose  of  salvation  is  to  save  us  to  a  better  life 
here;  salvation,  whether  for  the  present  or  the  future,  cannot  be  obtained 
by  subscription  to  a  theory.  What  then  is  to  be  said  about  a  life  to  come  ? 
This  simply,  that  we  cannot  conceive  it  but  as  growing  out  of  the  present, 
and  that  salvation  to  it  can  only  be  hoped  for  as  the  result  of  life  here,  and 
not  of  theory.  For  life  and  salvation  hereafter  there  is  all  but  universal 
hope,  but  when  they  are  made  the  goal  of  our  present  existence,  when  the 
future  is  conceived  as  the  absoluteness  and  perfection  and  totality  of  being 
instead  of  as  another  phase  of  being,  the  helpfulness  of  this  anticipation 
turns  to  mischief  and  detriment.  For  the  importance  of  the  transient 
present  will  shrink  in  comparison  with  the  value  of  the  infinite  future. 
Contempt  of  our  brief  earthly  sojourn  will  cause  us  to  do  ourselves  and  it  in- 
justice, for  it  will  diminish  our  care  for  the  being  and  living  of  this  moment, 
where  the  supremest  aim  should  be  their  exaltation  and  expansion.  It  con- 
fines and  lessens  life  and  we  sought  its  increase.  And  granting  that  salvation 
beyond  can  be  conditioned  only  upon  fulness  of  life  here,  does  it  not  fol- 
low that  this  constant  reference  to  the  future,  through  its  contracting  in- 
fluence upon  the  present,  diminishes  the  chances  of  a  future  life  ?  Is  not 
the  entire  process  an  inversion  of  the  natural  order  of  worlds  and  fatal  to 
our  completeness  ? 

When  we  are  rightly  related  to  the  present  world  we  shall  be. rightly 
related  to  the  world  to  come.  The  hope  of  Christianity  lies  in  a  reversal  of 
its  order  of  procedure.  It  must  go  to  the  next  world  through  this,  and  not 
come  to  this  through  the  next;  it  must  save  men  to  a  future  life  by  saving 
them  to  the  present  one,  instead  of  making  the  way  to  life  here  lie  through 
salvation  to  life  hereafter.  Because  the  hereafter  lias  been  so  absorbing 
many  persons  have  not  been  saved  even  to  this  world.  And  at  length  it  is 
certain  that  if  the  doctrines  of  Christianity  are  all-essential,  in  one  wav 
on ly  can  they  overcome  the  world  and  obtain  acknowledgement.  Those 
who  believe  must  change  the  world.  Those  whose*  actions  arc  vital  and 
inncrved  with  undcflecting  principles  will  command  all  followings,  name4 
them  as  we  may. 

A     grave    test    is   to   he  put  upon  institutions  that  arc  called  Christian. 


10 

Will  they  take  the  highest  ground  of  which  we  have  knowledge,  and  firmly 
adhere  to  it  until  society  is  remodeled  ?  Or  will  they  take  the  apparently 
safer  middle  course  and  bid  for  the  favor  of,  those  who  are  determined  to 
sacrifice  no  more  than  necessity  compels?  In  the  latter  case  we  may  look 
forward  to  sad  times  for  the  church.  For  a  body  of  men  will  arise 
who  will  choose  the  higher  course,  and  to  them  the  world  will 
gravitate.  There  will  come  men  who  believe  intensely  in  the  good  at  the 
heart  of  the  Universe,  and  in  the  power  and  reality  of  the  ideal,  as  did  the 
Hebrew  prophets.  They  will  place  themselves  immovably  upon  the  rock 
of  affirmation.  They  will  shake  off  the  yoke  of  irrationality  and  crystallized 
antiquity  which  crushes  human  life  and  stays  its  progress.  They  will  say, 
"  We  ourselves  will  form  a  nucleus  of  rational  existence.  We  will  live  in 
the  world  as  free  beings,  clearly  and  absolutely  renouncing  those  inherited 
ideas  and  damning  customs,  great  and  small,  which  repress  and  destroy 
individuality  and  manhood.  We  will  give  ourselves  from  the  remotest  cor- 
ners of  our  being  to  the  best  that  we  can  conceive,  believing  that  this  very 
power  of  conception  is  a  revelation  of  corresponding  realities  Iving  at  the 
depths  of  the  Universe  and  related  to  us.  Our  strongest  desire  shall  be  for 
the  pure  truth ,  for  from  this  source  alone  can  life  be  drawn."  When  such 
men  come — and  let  no  one  doubt  that  come  they  will — there  will  be  a 
crumbling  of  outworn  beliefs,  of  institutions  that  had  their  birth  in  a  more 
barbarous  past  and  have  out-lived  it.  These  characters  will  make  an  end 
of  playing  with  religion.  They  will  show  their  belief  in  God  by  an  as- 
tonishing method,  namelv  by  living  as  if  there  were  a  God. 

And  let  any  one  who  is  familiar  with  the  world  ask  himself  what  a  man 
would  now  be  led  to  do  who  proposed  to  be  absolute  with  his  religion.  He 
would  spend  days  and  nights  in  the  wilderness  casting  off  old  garments. 
He  would  come  forth  with  scarcely  a  point  of  attachment  with  what  now 
exists.  But  he  would  sit  down  in  the  very  midst  of  this  contracted, 
slavish,  corrupt  modern  life,  a  free  man,  and  live  in  truthful  relations  to 
God  under  the  tranquil  light  of  heaven.  He  would  cnre  for  none  of  the 
possessions  of  this  world,  for  none  of  the  objects  of  human  endeavor  as 
mankind  now  cares  for  them.  He  would  scorn  the  endless  self-seeking  of 
his  fellowmen,  their  petty  prudences,  their  contracted  estimates  of  worth. 
And  upon  the  little  spot  which  he  had  swept  clear  of  the  fossils  of  un- 
reason, aided  by  reason  and  godliness,  he  would  strive  to  reconstruct  all 
human  values  and  relations.  He  would  not  return  to  nature,  he  would  not 


11 

retire  from  the  world.  He  would  go  forward  to  nature,  and  he  would  hew 
out  a  model  for  humanity  in  the  very  heart  of  modern  life. 

That  men  of  this  stamp  will  appear  there  can  be  no  reasonable  doubt. 
They  are  the  inevitable,  the  necessary,  outcome  of  our  present  conditions. 
They  will  simply  give  utterance  to  the  future.  About  them  a  new  social 
and  religious  world  will  form  itself. 

Will  the  church  produce  these  men  ?  Will  it  yield  itself  to  the  high- 
est inspiration  of  the  time  and  lead  in  that  reformation  of  life,  in  that 
searching  transformation  of  aims  and  ideas,  of  society  itself,  which,  only, 
will  satisfy  the  claims  of  reason  and  morality  in  this  day  ?  This  is  the 
gravest  question  that  the  church  has  now  to  face.  Before  it  other  prob- 
lems sink  into  insignificance.  The  success  of  the  church  depends  upon  its 
ability  to  subordinate  all  other  questions  to  this  one.  If  the  Christian  or- 
ganization cannot  produce  such  reformers  there  is  still  a  compensating  way 
open  to  her.  She  can  welcome  them  when  they  appear  and  try  to  raise 
herself  to  their  level. 

III. 

• 

Tin*  religion  of  our  time  needs  to  be  permeated  by  a  new  love  of  truth. 
As  one  cannot  grow  effectively  in  knowledge  or  intellectual  power  without 
openness  of  mind,  neither  can  he  grow  in  religious  comprehension  and 
depth  without  the  same  unprejudiced  receptivity.  The  scientific  spirit  is 
catholic.  It  keeps  steadily  in  view  as  its  controlling  aim  the  ascertain- 
ment of  truth.  Those  of  the  most  contradictory  opinions  may  work  har- 
moniously in  science.  They  work  experimentally  and  the  trutli  slowly 
emerges  out  of  their  combined  efforts. 

The  same  purpose  and  feeling  and  method  should  characteri/e  those 
who  labor  for  what  concerns  increase  and  consummation  of  life,  namely 
religion.  Life  is  something  that  unfolds  constantly  and  widens,  and  it  is 
therefore,  like  other  branches  of  knowledge,  a  subject  for  investigation. 
New  truth  regarding  it  is  being  continually  discovered  ;  hence,  in  its  sphere 
also,  the  right  attitude  is  that  of  openness  and  expectation.  The  office  of 
religion,  as  it  works  upon  and  within  the  individual,  is  to  instruct  him  and 
to  inspire  him  to  the  most  complete  realization  of  his  being.  If  religion  is 
to  perform  this  its  legitimate  and  high  function  it  must  accept  tfie  contin- 
ually recurring  revelations  of  the  human  spirit,  and  thereby  keep  pace  with 


12 

its  growth.  These  revelations  come  with  the  deepening  of  human  experi- 
ence and  they  are  the  latest  word  of  God.  Men  cannot  he  saved  to  life 
except  by  listening  to  these  utterances  of  the  Almighty,  and  by  making 
them  the  soul  of  their  conduct. 

This  freedom  of  spirit,  then,  which  listens  finally  to  no  voice  but  that 
which  speaks  from  the  depths  of  one's  own  being,  accomplishes  the  end  of 
religion.  Largeness  and  fullness  of  life,  the  unfoldincnt  of  being,  at  which 
religion  aims,  can  corne  to  the  individual  only  if  he  gives  free  piny  to  his 
own  powers  and  tendencies  and  lets  them  grow  naturally  into  the  truth. 
What  the  individual  was  intended  to  be  he  in  this  manner  becomes.  The 
life  element  in  him  is  nurtured  and  conserved  and  allowed  to  attain  its  per- 
fect expression.  This  process  is  the  development  of  individuality. 

It  has  not  always  been  seen  that  expansion  of  life,  the  development 
and  preservation  of  natural  individuality,  is  the  central  purpose  of  religion. 
Even  to-day  the  freedom  and  independence  of  mind  that  are  indispensable 
to  the  ripening  of  individual  strength  are  widely  dreaded  and  discounten- 
anced. In  familiar  Christianity  an  initial  step  is  the  subjugation  of  reason, 
of  the  integrity  of  the  self,  not  their  preservation  and  emancipation.  The 
Christian  system  has  become  at  length  a  complicated  mechanism  for  the 
restriction  of  original  tendencies  and  the  suppression  of  strength.  This 
course  is  self-destructive.  Jt  is  religion  bravely  laboring  to  defeat  its  own 
ends. 

The  position  of  every  man  toward  his  neighbor  in  religious  concerns 
should  be,  "  What  have  you  to  tell  me  regarding  this  greatest  of  all  sub. 
jects?"  I  doubt  if  there  is  any  sadder  commentary  upon  our  modern  en- 
lightenment than  this,  that  one  individual  must  often  withhold  his  honest 
opinions  upon  religious  topics  from  fear  of  offending  others.  Those  who 
can  take  umbrage  at  the  truthful  expression  of  conviction  merit  the  pro- 
found compnssion  of  their  fellowmen.  Their  attitude  of  mind  belongs  to 
those  earlier  times  when  we  understood  more  vaguely  than  now  the  destiny 
of  man;  it  is  essentially  slavish.  It  is  repressive  of  some  of  the  rarest  at- 
tributes of  the  race. 

Against  this  we  hold  it  the  duty  of  every  man  to  revolt.  ]f  there  was 
ever  in  the  days  of  inherited  and  compulsory  reverence  for  authority  a 
proper  time  for  submission  to  popular  requirements  and  suppression  of 
honest  sentiments,  that  time  is  past.  It  cannot  be  urged  that  a  compliant 
course  is  useful.  At  present  the  course  of  utility  is  the  course  of  outright 


13 

and  audible  honesty,  for  we  are  beset  by  troubles  that  have  arisen  from 
temporizing  and  self-deception.  Because  this  repressive  tendency  lingers 
to  damage  and  discourage,  the  strong  man  has  a  special  mission.  He  must 
live  himself  out  into  the  world  that  others  may  learn  of  him  that  this  is 
likewise  their  supreme  duty.  He  must  utter  forth  the  treasure  of  his  in- 
most self  that  those  whose  lives  touch  his  may  have  the  benefit  of  a  true 
human  experience.  "An  immeasurable  increase  of  honesty  and  character 
would  there  be  if  this  were  once  believed  in  as  the  single  acceptable  way 
for  true  men.  There  would  occur  a  surprising  and  salutary  moral  and  re- 
ligious revolution.  There  would  be  a  return  to  reality,  for  reality  wells  up 
in  us.  We  have  no  higher  duty  than  allegiance  to  it.  For  this  sole  pur- 
pose is  a  man  here,  to  let  reality  speak  truthfully  through  him,  to  contrib- 
ute himself  to  humanity.  How  small  and  mean  and  mistaken,  then,  to 
mumble  and  prevaricate  or  be  silent!  And  for  what  reason  is  this  annihil- 
ation of  self?  Because  the  remnant  of  some  soul  that  has  starved  and 
stultified  its  substance  would  erect  itself  as  the  pattern  for  all  humanity, 
and  bids  us  eat  no  more  the  bread  of  life.  Not  so,  we  are  compelled  to 
cry,  by  all  that  we  reverence  in  the  Universe  !  We  pain  these  phantoms 
by  our  singularity  and  they  would  nullify  us.  They  are  terrified  by  our 
insistence  on  the  duty  of  having  flesh  and  blood,  and  being  what  God 
meant  us  to  be.  And  yet  every  individual  is  a  point  at  which  Divinity 
speaks,  and  in  a  new  language.  To  these  revelations  of  Deity  we  are  en- 
joined to  close  our  ears.  Is  it  the  youthful  temper  of  imitation  that  makes 
us  obey  these  counsellors,  while  we  deny  God  ;  or  is  it  fondness  for  their 
friendship,  or  fear  ?  Surely  they  are  not  true  friends  who  would  have  us 
commit  moral  suicide.  Perchance  we  are  enamored  of  safe  and  reputable 
silence.  Kvery  representative  of  our  race  that  has  contributed  to  make  life 
what  it  is  for  us  broke  through  the  fabric  of  current  respectabilities  and 
showed  where  there  was  something  more  respectable.  Woe  be  it.  to  us  in 
this  ain-  of  enlightenment,  if  we  do  not  put  a,  new  and  more  rational  habit 
into  the  blood  of  our  race,  and  make  it  easier  for  those  who  shall  follow  us 
to  live  as  men. 

That  there  should  be  some  possible  penalties  attached  to  return  to 
truth,  to  the  harmonizing  of  seeming  with  being,  convincingly  proves  the 
need  in  which  the  world  stands  of  such  a  revolution.  These  ;>enalties  arc 
the  safe-guards  of  stagnation.  When  men  of  strength  and  original  view 
keej)  silence  regarding  their  convictions  because  of  the  dangers  of  public 


14 

opinion,  it  is  easy  to  foresee  the  surpassingly  injurious  effects  of  this  power- 
on  weaker  minds.  It  narrows  and  limits  and  sometimes  totally  perverts 
their  growth,  and  the  world  loses  their  contribution  to  progress.  No  sacri- 
fice that  would  help  to  bring  this  mutilating  custom  of  humanity  to  an  end 
would  be  too  great.  And  yet  every  one  who  has  an  independent  thought 
still  unexpressed  is  refusing  to  make  this  sacrifice.  Everyone  who  writhes 
into  conformity  with  what  he  cannot  unqualifiedly  believe,  is  even  worse  ; 
he  is  a  traitor  to  himself  and  to  his  fellows  who  may  rightlv  demand  the 
service  of  his  one,  or  five,  or  ten  talents.  Not  by  forced  conformity,  or 
silence,  or  huskiness  of  voice  can  he  benefit  anyone,  and  by  far  the  least 
those  who  clamor  for  lethargy  of  the  faculties  on  a  subject  so  vital  as  re- 
ligion. What  other  men  want  is  a  knowledge  of  our  own  experiences. 
They  are  struggling  in  secret  over  the  same  difficulties,  and  to  know  the 
way  that  we  have  honestly  traveled  cannot  fail  to  give  them  light  and 
strength.  Let  no  one  ask  another  to  believe  as  he  does,  but  let  him  freely 
reveal  his  inner  life  and  opinions. 

These  considerations  teach  that  the  attitude  of  the  religionist  and  of 
the  scientist  should  be  the  same.  One  seeks  the  truth,  the  other  the  good, 
and  the  finding  of  each  is  a  perpetual  process  in  which  every  seeker  aids. 
The  reason  that  science  is  today  a  resistless  progressive  force  in  the  civi- 
lized world,  and  the  current  religion  paralyzed  and  feeble  and  hardly  able 
to  keep  itself  respected,  is  that  the  former  has  recognized  this  principle  of 
growth  while  the  latter  has  not.  The  current  religion  will  never  recover 
its  lost  ground,  and  it  ought  not  to  recover  it,  until  in  this  fundamental  re- 
spect it  has  changed.  It  asks  men  to  'adopt'  certain  opinions  and  there- 
after to  be  dead  to  all  irreconcilable  considerations.  It  says:  "This  is 
true  ;  accept  it  and  live  by  it.  "  It  should  say  :  "  This  is  my  conviction  ; 
it  is  the  expression  of  my  deepest  self,  after  careful  study  and  reflection  and 
growth.  Test  candidly  my  belief  and  the  reasons  for  it,  aided  by  all  the 
knowledge  you  can  get.  Improve  upon  it,  or  overthrow  it,  if  you  can. 
And  let  your  own  final  opinions  be  the  outcome  of  all  your  labors,  the  re- 
sult of  the  necessity  of  your  nature.  Grow  to  them,  do  not  force  yourself 
to  have  them.  And  above  all  permit  no  human  being  to  draw  you  from  the 
path  of  your  own  judgment.  Meantime,  while  you  are  thinking  with  abso- 
lute integrity,  likewise  act  with  absolute  integrity.  Act,  as  you  think, 
according  to  the  highest  that  you  know."  The  religion  of  the  time  does 
not  often  speak  in  this  manner,  and  the  same  vice  permeates  our  instltu- 


15 

tions  of  learning,  so  that  perfect  freedom  of  thought  and  expression  on  sub- 
jects relating  to  life  is  rarely  found.  The  penalty  is  a  heavy  one,  and  we 
are  paying  it  in  the  form  of  feeble  characters  and  timid  thinkers,  and  a  re- 
ligion apparently  tottering  to  its  fall. 

The  good  can  only  be  promoted  and  our  knowledge  of  it  enlarged 
when  each  individual,  becoming  an  investigator  of  himself,  searches  out  and, 
assiduously  cultivates  whatever  elements  of  good  he  finds  in  his  being  in 
the  way  peculiar  and  suitable  to  him,  and  presents  himself  and  his  discov- 
eries an  original  contribution  to  the  total  good  in  the  world.  The  good  is 
always  in  individuals,  and  living,  not  something  hanging  over  them  in  the 
air  to  be  captured  and  held  fast  in  the  form  of  an  opinion.  An  opinion  is 
almost  worthless  because  so  essentially  meaningless  until  it  has  grown  out 
of  one's  native  tendencies  and  epitomizes  one's  intimate  character.  Hence 
out  practice  of  imposing  opinions  upon  others  is  a  twofold  error.  It  does 
not  reproduce  in  anyone  a  life  that  vitally  conforms  to  the  imparted 
thought,  for  transplanted  opinions  are  like  memorized  formulas  and  cannot 
inspire  the  soul  ;  and  furthermore,  human  spirits  encased  in  an  iron  gar- 
ment whose  form  they  must  assume  never  mature,  they  never  confer  their 
unique  quota  of  goodness  and  truth  on  the  world,  the  fruits  that  no  one 
else  could  yield  and  they  were  created  to  bear  die  in  the  bud. 

Tin-  matter  may  be  looked  at  in  several  ways.  The  common  estimate 
finds  it  a  virtuous  proceeding;  some  consider  the  general  welfare,  and  re. 
£ret  that  there  needs  must  be  such  sacrifice  of  costly  energy  ;  a  few  think 
ot'the  mutilated  individuals  themselves  and  ponder  the  inscrutable  economy 
that  must  wither  mind  and  morals  to  obtain  spiritual  beauty.  But  the 
judgment  that  is  worthy  our  thought  is  that  of  living  and  late  morality. 
It  does  not  satisfy  itself  with  weak  regrets  and  relapse  into  speculative  ac- 
quiescence. It  pronounces  these  practices  to  be  sinful  practices  and  de- 
clares that  they  must  cease  wherever  it  can  permeate.  Are  they  performed 
in  the  name  of  religion  ?  Then  this  religion  in  sanctioning  them  is  inimi- 
ral  to  God  and  man.  For  each  of  these  marred  beings,  made,  we  say,  by 
God  and  in  the  image  of  God,  was  intended  to  perfect  the  potentialities  of 
his  divinely  implanted  nature.  When  men  come  forward  to  thwart  this 
sacred  potency  they  wrest  the  universe  from  God.  It  is  sublime  insolence- 
They  assume  a  knowledge  of  creative  purposes  more  intimate  and  deep 
than  lias  (  )nmiscience  himself.  This  is  atheism,  true  and  pure  and  noxious. 
These  purposes  relating  to  the  individual  are  not  advertised  to  the  public; 


16 

only  he  for  whom  they  exist  knows  them  ;  they  disclose  themselves  in  his 
innermost  being,  in  the  tendencies  of  his  nature.  In  them  the  ruler  of 
worlds  reveals  himself  to  each  unit  of  the  race  ;  the  office  of  religion  is  to 
teach  the  individual  how  to  detect  these  tendencies  in  himself  and  to  fol- 
low them  with  singleness  of  purpose  to  their  highest  fulfilment. 

Opinions  arrived  at  through  freedom  lead  toward  this  end.  They  be- 
come a  part  of  the  fibre  of  the  person,  the  living  truth  for  him.  Mankind 
must  attain  this  wisdom,  it  must  learn  the  sacredness  of  the  person  and 
insist  that  he  be  not  tampered  with.  A  religion  that  does  not  encourage 
and  develop  individuality  is  defective  and  impotent.  It  is  not  yet  the 
world  religion. 

When  these  truths  are  recognized  religion  will  assume  the  attitude  of 
philosophy  and  science.  It  will  be  in  harmony,  then,  with  all  forces  work- 
ing to  perfect  mankind  ;  not  despairingly  antagonistic  to  them.  Deny  this 
antagonism  we  may,  but  it  exists  and  must  exist  while  religion  has  methods 
that  ignore  experience  and  reason.  On  this  higher  ground  differences  of 
opinion  will  not  be  assailed  as  calamitous.  They  will  be  recognized  as  en- 
riching life  and  as  valuable  elements  of  that  whole  from  which  the  true 
and  good  arise  in  their  completer  form  for  each  generation.  In  compari- 
son with  the  average  human  character  possible  under  the  repressive,  self- 
interested,  effeminating  system  of  the  present,  the  characters  that  will  then 
appear  in  abundance  will  have  colossal  proportions. 


17 


The  Old  and  the  New  Life. 


No  one  has  ever  undertaken  to  compute  tin'  ell'ects  upon  mankind  in 
these  modern  days,  of  insufficient  exercise  of  the  voluntary  muscles.  While 
we  pass,  as  \ve  are  now  passing,  from  the  period  essentially  physical  and 
muscular  to  that  of  prevalent  brain  and  intelligence  and  reiined  emotions, 
we  are  certain,  with  characteristic  human  one-sidcdness.  to  slight  what  we 
seem  about  to  transcend  and  exairirerate  what  we  be^in  to  admire.  And  we 
are  .<li«rlitin;r  the  body. 

lint  the  body  is  a  very  <:<><>d  friend  of  the  mind,  is  partner  in  all  men- 
tal acts,  is  the  masculine  parental  element  of  not  the  lowest  instincts  only 
but  of  the  purest  feelings  and  noblest  longings,  Medical  science  has  seen 
that  an  invalid  may  lon_Lr  preserve  a  sweet  temper,  but  under  incurable  suf- 
fering will  almost  certainly  decay  into  (juerulousness.  The  process  is  not 
that  of  soul  or  spirit  resisting  the  inroads  of  disease  in  an  alien  body,  and 
capable  of  eternal  resistance  but  for  the  failure  of  its  own  faith  and  willing- 
ness to  be  firm.  No,  disease  encroaches  upon  the  elements  of  which  we  are 
framed,  it  strikes  one  oi^ran  first.  perhap>.  and  begins  to  communicate  pro- 
gressive imperfection  to  all.  If  the  liver  is  the  centre  of  trouble  the  v:<ror 
of  all  processes  abates ;  the  blood  comes  back  from  the  lunirs  impure,  the 
heart  beats  feebler,  the  brain  pies  lame;  and  thus  all  other  orirans  bc^in  to 
co-operate  with  the  sick  one  to  make  it  sicker  and  to  dra.ir  the  whole  system 
down.  The  blood  that  returns  to  the  recalcitrant  liver  is  scant  of  the  (juali- 
ties  that  repair  because  the  lunirs  are  now  crippled,  and  it  runs  laboriously 
and  slowly  on  account  of  the  disaffection  of  the  heart  and  the  reservoirs  of 
propulsive  nerve  force. 

\Ve  usually  neglect  the  physical  for  a  singular  reason.  It  is  to  save 
time.  We  would  like  to  expand  the  brain  life  to  the  utmost.  It  seems  to 
us  that  the  moments  taken  from  the  brain  are  squandered.  That  the  brain 


18 

and  body  are  functionally  inseparable  has  not  penetrated  our  theory.  That 
physical  pleasure  is  glorious  and  necessary  we  seem  to  be  making  ourselves 
forget.  The  wholesome  sensation  of  fine  physical  existing  is,  next  to  life 
itself,  the  choicest  of  heaven's  gifts.  Nothing  can  take  its  place.  There 
is  no  joy  in  genius  without  it ;  in  its  absence  the  moral  man  asks  himself  the 
meaning  and  profit  of  morality. 

In  our  adoration  of  the  mental  we  do  not  perspicaciously  see  for-  what 
we  wish  to  save  time.  Is  it  that  life  shall  be  more  wealthy  in  experiences? 
It  is  dangerous  to  have  no  guide  in  the  selection  of  experiences.  By  crowd- 
ing in  some  things  others  are  crowded  out.  No  one  transcends  his  capacity. 
He  inherits  a  fixed  degree  of  life  power :  if  he  is  skillful  the  most  will  come 
of  it,  if  unskillful  he  will  never  climb  the  topmost  peak  of  his  potentiality. 
If  we  crave  more  mentality  than  nature  planned  for  us  we  sacrifice  both 
mental  and  physical  powers  and  fall  in  disappointment  and  decrepitude. 
There  are  pre-established  harmonies.  The  secret  of  secrets  that  we  shall 
spend  our  days  searching  and  applying  is  the  equilibrium  of  our  forces,  that 
we  may  wear  no  faculty  out  by  wilful  over-use,  neglecting  the  noble  treas- 
ures of  fresh  and  untried  talent.  Scheming  to  circumvent  our  capacities  is 
a  most  mortal  mistake.  When  we  cannot  enjoy  a  forest  the  power  to  make 
a  great  speech  or  improve  the  calculus  is  piteous  ;  when  the  eye  shows  care, 
and  vibrancy  has  died  from  the  laugh,  it  were  nothing  to  have  taken  a  city 
or  absorbed  the  railroad  systems  of  a  continent.  We  do  not  gain  time,  or 
cogency,  or  bliss  by  disregarding  the  balance  in  nature ;  the  condition  of 
completeness  is  to  learn  how  all  elements  of  our  constitution  minister  to  one 
another,  and  to  apply  the  law  of  this  service. 

Various  are  the  misconceptions  growing  out  of  the  past  that  lead  us 
astray.  Our  traditions  concerning  labor  involve  us  in  troublesome  shallows. 
It  has  been  thought  demeaning  to  perform  physical  labor  of  any  but  selected 
sorts;  an  idea  that  lingers  with  us  and  is  potent  still.  The  misconception 
formerly  affected  only  a  few.  It  was  not  optional  with  the  most  of  mankind 
to  be  genteel ;  they  were  outcasts  by  necessity  and  the  accompaniment  of 
their  inferiority  was  manual  toil.  Besides  this  they  were  men  at  arms,  fight- 
ing for  their  masters  or  superiors.  And  the  superiors  themselves?  They 
too  were  fighters — in  earnest  most  of  the  time,  the  rest  of  it  in  play,  am! 
they  were  always  training  in  warlike  exercises.  So,  although  labor  was 
contemptuously  esteemed,  it  did  not  result  in  the  abandonment  of  physical 
life  by  the  patrician  elements.  Far  otherwise.  Their  absorbing  function 


19 

was  physical.     They  were  warriors,  leading  the  most  active  lives. 

Modern  life  changes  the  picture.  War  becomes  exceptional,  not  con- 
stant. The  pratriciau  class  loses  its  primitive  function.  It  separates  into 
two  sections,  the  people  of  leisure  and  the  managers  of  commerce.  The  for- 
mer are  the  true  descendants  of  the  earlier  patrician  caste,  they  inherited 
wealth  without  labor  ;  the  latter  have  gradually  forced  their  way  to  recog- 
nition, and  have  had  their  wealth  to  create.  For  the  definite  and  necessary 
and  energetic  occupation  that  they  lost  the  former  have  fostered  sports,  ri- 
ding and  hunting  and  fishing,  open  air  games  of  strength  and  skill.  The 
patricians  that  emerged  from  trade  have  not  had  leisure.  They  were  obliged 
to  make  themselves  patrician  by  amassing  wealth,  which  occupied  their  days 
and  nights.  They  neglected  the  sports  of  necessity  and  being  from  ancestral 
habit  and  tradition  workers  more  than  warriors  or  sportsmen,  had  no  inclina- 
tion to  physical  pursuits  for  nothing  but  pastime. 

The  nat  ure  of  their  new  activities  was  mental  rather  than  physical.  There 
were  two  general  grades  of  the  new  labor,  the  one  ownership  and  manage- 
ment, the  other  the  subordinate  processes  which  were  extensively  manual  and 
muscular.  The  first  involved  a  minimum  of  physical  exertion,  and  the 
greater  part  of  it  none.  But  it  was  this  and  not  the  other,  the  managing 
and  mental  functions  and  not  the  subordinate  ones,  that  conferred  the  patri- 
cian degree.  In  other  words,  the  new  patricians  of  the  industrial  order  were 
divorced  in  their  occupations  from  the  use  of  the  body,  and  since  it  did  not 
•  I  sc  -nd  to  them  naturally  in  any  other  form,  it  dropped  out  of  their  lives. 

In  this  evolution  the  uppermost  criterion  of  gentility  makes  against  the 
physical  at  nearly  all  points.  In  great  centres  of  trade  a  distinction  is  drawn 
between  large  and  small  enterprises,  and  wholesale  merchants  are  perceived 
to  be  qualified  fora  higher  social  elevation  than  ivtailers.  This  discrimina- 
tion was  another  against  the  body.  Son-  of  -good"  families  may  become 
bank  clerks  and  book-keepers,  and  this  is  congenial  to  their  birth  and  social 
repute,  but  they  have  to  defy  public  opinion  to  learn  a  trade  or  follow  ordi- 
nary labor.  In  the  one  case  they  bring  the  physical  powers  into  play,  in  the 
other  it  is  the  brain  they  work,  mechanically,  in  a  close  and  generally  smiles 
place,  and  this  they  do  through  all  the  best  hours  of  the  day.  Nevertheless 
it  i>  genteel  and  manual  toil  is  not.*  In  the  shadowy  dilVerentiations  of 

*     S;i\c  on  i  In- l';iriii.  which  IKUVCVIT  curries  with  it  fo  many  drawbacks  1  hat  most  who  can  avoid 


20 

social  eminence  the  preference  goes  against  physical  duration  and  welfare. 

What  is  the  result  ?  The  breeding  of  a  class  of  physical  weaklings  and 
thereby  a  class  of  mental  weaklings.  Every  inducement  that  society  com- 
mands is  used  to  snare  the  best  specimens  of  the  race  into  these  deteriorating 
conditions.  The  keen  spur  of  social  ambition  pricks  men  wherever  they  are 
in  the  scale  of  life,  and  as  they  go  up  they  leave  the  support  and  growth  of 
the  physical  forces  through  exercise  and  sun  and  air,  fountain  sources  of  all 
forms  of  vigor,  below.  And  what  is  this  process  when  stript  of  social  encomi- 
ums? It  is  the  organized  promotion  of  the  choicer  individuals  of  the  race  to 
conditions  of  slow  but  certain  death.  It  moves  them  toward  an  imagined, 
chimerical  eminence  of  human  things,  in  order  to  destroy  their  vigor  and  spoil 
their  progeny.  It  analogues  the  church  method  with  its  saints,  and  colleges 
of  a  late  date 'with  tjieir  bachelor  fellowships  for  the  best  minds.*  It  was 
humanly  ordained  that  such  should  not  marry,  that  whatever  eminence  of 
piety  or  intelligence  showed  itself  was  to  be  headed  off,  cornered  and  extir- 
pated. The  finest  characteristics  were  struck  from  the  breed  ;  the  human 
stock  was  skimmed  of  its  cream.  Celibacy  is  not  in  our  day  enjoined  upon 
those  who  show  capacity  for  the  superior  places;  they  may  have  posterity, 
but  deteriorated  posterity,  posterity  worse  than  none.  Nature  does  not  for- 
forgive  this  arch  crime  of  civilization,  the  holding  of  physical  concerns  in 
little  esteem. 

There  are  sometimes  advantages  with  the  change,  as  where  promotion 
enlarges  the  income.  Food  and  domestic  environment  are  improved,  there 
are  vacations  and  in  some  instances  leisure.  But  commonly  the  mechanic 
who  assumes  the  mantle  of  gentility  by  becoming  a  clerk  does  not  gain  in  dol- 
lars. Nevertheless  he  loses  his  exercise  and  digestion.  Our  farmers  are  said 
to  overwork,  and  the  report  is  that  the  clerks  out-marched  them  in  the  last 
war.  That  would  not  hinder  me  from  preferring  the  farmer's  organization, 
and  knowing  that  his  son  will  become  proprietor  of  the  store  before  any  of  its 
town-born  clerks.  'The  robust  children  of  rural  districts,  of  less  cultivated 
habits  of  attention  than  town-born  children,  are  found  to  be  slower  in  receiv- 
ing ideas, '  observers  tell  us  ;  '  but  with  cultivation  they  are  brought  up  to 
equal  capacities  of  attention,  and  to  greater  retentiveness  of  the  matter  taught, 
than  the  common  classes  of  town-born  children.'  t 

We   might  as   well  admit  that  we    cannot  cheat  the  body  of  its  open  air 

*    See  Francis  Galton. 

t    Chadwick'e  National  Health,  p    100. 


21 

life  without  stealing  from   the  brain  its  best  thoughts  and  its  power  and  im- 
pulse to  execute. 

The  higher  avenues  of  life  are  of  course  deleterious  for  other 
reasons,  and  our  genteel  dismissal  of  the  categorical  imperative  of 
bodily  law  is  therefore  the  more  to  our  loss.  The  internecine  quality 
of  competition  increases  with  the  commercial  altitude  of  competitors, 
and  the  stony  path  to  financial  eminence  is  for  most  of  those  who  bend  their 
steps  thither  the  way  to  hell  and  destruction.  The  Bible  uses  such  forcible 
language  to  impress  upon  man  that  conduct  ruinous  to  the  perfect  action  of 
the  bodily  elements,  and  in  some  particular  sense  of  those  latest  manufactured 
elements  so  directly  associated  with  the  higher  sentiments,  lead  to  the  deepest 
<!<•<•  |  >s  of  suffering  and  degradation,  to  damnation  and  hell.  And  adapting 
biblical  revelation  and  lan.irmigt1  to  the  revelations  of  science  in  this  day,  we 
find  agreement  in  this,  that  the  way  to  wealth  is  the  way  to  hell.  Compare  the 
canonical  denunciations  of  the  pursuit  of  riches  with  the  ultimatum  of  the 
scientist  :  *  "Psychical  disturbances  are  a  prolific  source  of  diseases  of  the 
nervous  system,  and  it  is  probable  that  as  civilization  advances  these  causes 
will  exercise  a  more  and  more  predominant  influence  in  the  production  of 
n  M-VOIIS  disease.  The  depressing  passions,  such  as  fright,  alarm,  disgust, 
terror,  and  rage,  have,  no  doubt,  in  all  ages,  exerted  a  deleterious  influence 
on  the  nervous  system;  but  in  the  present  day  the  keen  competition  evoked 
by  the  struggle  for  existence  in  the  higher  departments  of  social  life  must 
subject  the  latest  evolved  portion  of  the  nervous  system  to  a  strain  so  great, 
that  those  only  possessing  the  strongest  and  best  balanced  nervous  system 
c;in  escape  unscathed."  t 

The  bre:; king  of  the  balance  of  the  nervous  system  is  hell.  The  nerv- 
ous system  i<  a  d"licatc  musical  instrument ;  if  you  disturb  the  least  of  its 
atoms  the  Irirmony  begins  to  falter.  It  depends  upon  such  apparently  re- 
mote things  as  the  girth  of  the  chest,  the  lifting  power,  and  the  density  of 
the  Hesh.  There  is  a  moment  of  utmost  physical  perfection  and  at  that  verv 
moment  the  nervous  system  is  playing  the  Ninth  Symphony  and 
singing  supernal  songs.  A  day  indoors  drives  out  Beethoven  and  shuts  up 
heaven.  A  year  at  the  counter  or  desk  or  dictionary  may  forever  cloud  the 
fa.-  of  (Jod.  When  love  dies  God  dies,  said  Tolstoi,  if  not  in  these  words 

*     Dr.  KOPP. 

t     S(v  fojmlar  SdeiUM   l/»//'///y,  Feb.  1888,  p.  508.     Art,  by  Mary  T.  Bissell,  M.  D. 


22 

by  suggestion  in  his  wonderful  title  ''Where  love  is  there  God  is."  Love 
and  God  are  functions  of  the  nervous  system.  In  that  moment  of  utmost 
physical  perfection  love  is  alive  and  God  is  there.  God  dies  by  inches  out 
of  most  lives.  These  beautiful  presences,  God  and  love,  depend  on  the  love 
and  God  capacity.  An  ounce  of  food  taken  daily  beyond  the  need  of  food 
banishes  daily  more  than  an  ounce  of  God.  The  progressive  atrophy  of  the 
tissues  through  want  of  use  denotes  the  atrophy  of  God  and  love.  Love  is 
the  self -annihilating  instinct  of  one  being  in  the  presence  of  another — and 
the  power  of  instincts  is  greatest  in  the  prime  of  man.  Love  is  charity,  and 
in  the  immense  recuperative  morning  of  life  generosity  is»supreme. 
Let  us  be  not  mocked.  Age  kills  God. 

"  What  is  it  to  grow  old  ? 

*  *  *  * 

It  is  to  spend  long  days 

And  not  once  feel  that  we  were  ever  young  ; 

****** 

It  is  to  suffer  this, 

And  feel  but  half,   and  feebly,   what  we  feel. 

Deep  in  our  hidden  heart 

Festers  the  dull  remembrance  of  a  change, 

But  no  emotion — none."     f 

We  must  grow  old  but  we  need  not  grow  prematurely  old.  Every  depart- 
ure from  the  perfect  physical  life  is  expiated  by  premature  age.  Age 
neither  suffers  nor  enjoys.  Where  feeling  is  not  there  God  is  not.  The 
tranquility  of  an  old  man  is  not  happiness.  "Do  you  say  that  old  age  is 
unfeeling?"  asks  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes.  "It  has  not  vital  energy 
enough  to  supply  the  waste  of  the  more  exhausting  emotions."  Can 
we  postpone  old  age?  This  is  the  question  at  the  heart  of  all  bibles  and 
moral  treatises.  This  same  youthful  octogenarian,  Dr.  Holmes,  gives  us 
warning  with  genial  sadness  of  what  must  happen  to  every  daring  survivor 
who  scales  the  white  peaks  of  age.  "Nature's  kindly  anodyne  is  telling 
upon  us  more  and  more  with  every  year.  Our  old  doctors  used  to  give  an 
opiate  which  they  called  'the  black  drop. '  It  was  stronger  than  laudanum, 
and,  in  fact,  a  dangerously  powerful  narcotic.  Something  like  this  i.s  that 
potent  drug  in  Nature's  pharmacopoeia  which  she  reserves  for  the  time  of 
need, — the  later  stages  of  life.  She  commonly  begins  administering  it  at 
about  the  time  of  the 'grand  climacteric,  '  the  ninth  septennial  jx-riod,  the 

+    Matthew  Arnold,    Growing  Old. 


23 

sixty-third  year.  More  and  more  freely  she  gives  it,  as  the  years  go  on,  to 
her  grey-haired  children,  until,  if  they  last  long  enough,  every  faculty  is 
benumbed,  and  they  drop  off  quietly  into  sleep  under  its  benign  influence.  " 
Happiness  is  contingent  upon  the  degree  of  life  and  sensation  and  these  have 
ebbed  low  in  the  old  man.  "Time,  the  inexorable,  does  not  threaten  him 
with  the  scythe  so  often  as  with  the  sand  bag.  He  does  not  cut,  but  he 
stuns  and  stupifies.  " 

There  are  no  tumultuous  sufferings  in  age,  but  I  cannot  acquit  the  pre- 
maturely old  (.1  the  sorrows,  of  hell.  In  them  "festers  the  dull  remem- 
brance of  a  change"  that  wisdom  might  have  deferred. 

Physical  and  moral  are  at  last  one.  They  have  the  same  root  and 
trunk  ;  we  differentiate  them  by  analysis,  and  fictitiously.  Moral  pains  are 
as  physical  as  the  hand  or  foot.  They  are  the  discomfiture  of  the  physical 
elements,  and  are  caused  alike  by  infractions  of  the  so-called  moral  law  and 
by  bodily  distempers.  A  cold  not  only  sharpens  the  knives  of  conscience 
but  its  effect  is  incipient  moral  insanity.  We  may  be  sure  that  conduct 
which  in  none  of  its  consequences  tends  to  the  destruction  of  the  physical  is 
not  immoral.  The  greater  part  of  moral  suffering  in  the  world  is  the  product 
of  a  misunderstanding.  Actions  are  supposed  to  be  injurious  that  are  not 
injurious,  and  they  are  met  with  the  moral  lash.  The  moral  castigation 
causes  unmeasured  suffering  but  suffering  that  was  gratuitous,  mistaken, 
ignorance -born.  "  Terrible  to  me  are  the  awful  sufferings  from  trifles  and 
unnecessary  catastrophes,"  said  Rakhmetof.  f 

Thus  at  last  all  morality  and  all  religion,  all  questions  of  the  conduct  of 
life  and  the  attainment  of  happiness  and  heaven  and  God,  return  in  the 
grand  sweep  of  the  circle  wherein  the  universe  is  compassed  to  this, — the 
perfection  of  man's  body.  Whatever  goods  we  know  are  ascending 
goods  while  the  sun  of  life  goes  up,  lessening  all  the  fading  afternoon  until 
darkness  sombrely  invests  thenl  and  terminates  all.  It  were  worthy  the  ec- 
stasies and  sacrifices  of  all  the  best  of  a  generation  or  of  ten  generations  to 
establish  this  central  and  spherical  character  of  the  body,  at  bottom  theirrop- 
iiiir  aim  of  fetish-worshipper  and  priest  and  scientist  in  all  generations  since 
the  Cenozoic  time,  altho  obscured  by  many  obscurations  of  ihcorv.  conscious 
purpose  and  method. 


*     nrfr  the  Tea-Cup*,  p.  80, 
1      1  n  TrhiTiinichvfpkv'n     A    Vital 


24 

I  have  gone  a  long  way  and  said  much  to  show  how  deep  and  heavy  the 
curse  of  our  commercial  and  social  method  is,  that  it  weighs  down  to  hell — a 
tangible,  present,  demonstrable  hell,  the  mother-hell  of  all  moral  obliquities 
— and  that  it  is  not  to  be  lifted  until  the  flaming  sword  of  a  higher  thought 
banishes  the  prime  satan  of  gain  by  one  man  through  the  labor  and  loss  of 
another,  competition,  and  all  that  brood. 

But  there  are  many  more  manifestations  of  the  curse  by  which  we  die, 
knowing  the  remedy.  A  vitiating  fallacy  of  our  lives  is  that  goods,  material 
possessions,  are  requisite  to  culture  and  gentility.  After  some  few  ordinary 
comforts  of  life  it  is  social  standing,  the  patrician  rank,  that  people  crave  ; 
and  because  wealth  and  standing  have  been  cousins-german  until  now  in  the 
world's  evolution,  they  imagine  them  inseparable  organically  and  forever. 
There  is  no  vital  bond  between  them.  Their  association  in  the  past  was 
natural.  Culture  required  leisure,  and  leisure  was  freedom  from  drudgery. 
It  was  bought  by  wealth  or  power,  either  of  which  engaged  that  drudgery 
should  be  done  by  someone  else.  In  the  earlier  organization  of  the  world  it 
was  only  possible  to  cultivate  a  few  persons  at  a  time.  If  the  effort  had  been 
made  to  cultivate  many,  it  must  have  failed,  and  the  failure  would  have 
hindered  even  the  few  who  won  culture  from  getting  it.  It  was  a  matter  of 
arithmetic.  The  means  of  culture  were  few  ;  had  they  been  spread  out,  had 
there  been  a  little  less  for  those  who  captured  them,  it  must  have  been  at 
the  expense  of  cultivation  itself. 

But  it  may  be  going  too  far  to  say  that  it  was  a  matter  of  arithmetic. 
Perhaps  had  the  men  been  different  there  might  have  been  an  extension  of 
culture  without  sacrifice  of  its  intensity.  But  the  men  were  not  different. 
It  took  thousands  of  years  to  make  them  different,  and  this  process  of  mak- 
ing them  different  was  culture.  Culture  was  then  a  different  thing  from 
now;  not  different  in  essence  but  different  in  the  qualities  it  had  to  train. 
In  order  that  the  development  of  the  race  might  go  on  at  all  it  was  essential 
to  establish  certain  habits  in  the  race.  Bagehot  has  taught  us  of  what  pri- 
mary importance  it  was  for  the  develojynent  of  society  that  obedience  should 
become  a  radical  instinct.  "Perhaps,"  says  that  writer,  "every  young 
Englishman  who  comes  nowadays  to  Aristotle  or  Plato  is  struck  with  their 
conservatism  :  fresh  from  the  liberal  doctrines  of  the  present  age.  he  wonders 
at  finding  in  those  recognized  teachers  so  much  contrary  teaching.  They 
both — unlike  as  they  are — hold  with  Xenophon — so  unlike  both — that  man 


25 

is  the  'hardest  of  all  animals  to  govern.'  Of  Plato  it  might  indeed  be 
plausibly  said  that  the  adherents  of  an  intuitive  philosophy,  being  the  'tories 
of  speculation,'  have  commonly  been  prone  to  conservatism  in  government  ; 
but  Aristotle,  the  founder  of  the  experience  philosophy,  ought,  according  to 
that  doctrine,  to  have  been  a  liberal,  if  any  one  ever  was  a  liberal.  In  fact, 
both  of  these  men  lived  when  men  had  not  '  had  time  to  forget'  the  difficul- 
ties of  government.  We  have  forgotten  them  altogether.  We  reckon,  as 
£he  basis  of  our  culture,  upon  an  amount  erf  order,  erf  tacit  obedience,  of  pre- 
scriptive governability,  which  these  philosophers  hoped  to  get  as  a  principal 
result  of  their  culture.  We  take  without  thought  as  a  datum  what  they 
hunted  as  a  quaesitWH."  * 

People  were  then  learning  the  rudiments  of  morality.  A  great  deal 
had  to  be  postponed.  The  power  of  inhibition  was  cultivated  by  asceticism, 
but  thisaceticism  dwarfed  nature  in  other  parts.  "The  way  to  eternal  life  is 
through  the  portal  of  sacrifice,  of  death,"  says  Davidson. 

But  centuries  of  grim  experience  have  now  prepared  the  ground  for 
culture  of  higher  morality  ;  hereditary  traits  like  obedience  are  fairly  estab- 
lished and  even  too  well  established.  We  must  ascertain  the  nature  of  this 

I 

higher  morality,  what  outward  conditions  it  must  create  to  accomplish  its 
dominion  of  the  world. 

The  first  and  sustaining  stratum  of  the  new  order  is,  as  we  have  shown, 
that  the  physical  life  be  promoted  to  its  right  rank.  It  shall  not  be  left  to 
casual  volition,  or  an  evanescent  impulse  to  steal  an  hour  for  the  body 
against  conscience  and  financial  welfare  :  hut  shall  become  a  part  of  the  un- 
alterable ordering  of  the  day  and  year  and  century,  for  each  man  and 
woman,  a  p:irt  of  his  function  as  tenant  of  the  earth,  not  to  be  shirked  with- 
out d<vp  pangs  of  spirit  and  stringent  social  penalties.  The  social  opprobrium 
shall  set  sternlv  against  those  who  tempt  or  compel  or  permit  their  fellows  to  ex- 
ceed the  natural  limits  of  exertion,  \\lietherphysical  or  mental,  or  who  them- 
s-lves  From  false  ambition  or  perverted  conscience  over-step  them. 

And  how  is  this  to  be  done?  Not  by  sub-idi/ing  games  or  eulogi/ing 
self-restraint.  It  is  to  be  done  by  making  manual  labor  a  function  neces- 
sary to  each,  and  undelegable.  absolutely  undelcgahle  by  the  well.  The 
manual  workers  now  overwork,  not  because  overwork  is  a  necessity 
unavoidable  if  the  world  is  to  have  its  present  quantity  of  goods  for  con- 

*        /'f/i/xtcx  ilml   /'ofifti-x       III 


26 

sumption  ;  they  overwork  because  a  large  percentage  of  the  population,  to  its 
own  hurt,  does  no  manual  work  at  all.  Those  who  do  no  physical  labor, 
whether  brain  workers  or  idlers,  suffer  from  physical  disuse  and  softening 
tissues,  not  because  there  is  no  bodily  labor  to  be  performed,  but  because  so- 
ciety has  so  put  itself  together  that  it  is  disgraceful  to  do  the  bodily  labor ; 
or  difficult  or  impossible,  from  the  mechanical  arrangement  of  industry,  to  do 
some  without  doing  too  much. 

A  simple  change  of  industrial  mechanism  will  correct  this  monstrous 
evil.  The  manual  worker  now  stands  at  his  post  eight,  ten,  twelve,  fifteen 
hours  daily,  always  the  same  man.  Let  this  custom  be  modified  so  that  those 
who  wish  may  work  one-half  the  day  instead  of  all  day,  or  even  less  than 
half,  being  then  replaced  by  other  men  wishing  to  work  but  part  of  the  day. 
There  would  be  some  increase  of  complexity,  tho  very  slight  as  against  the 
enormous  advantages.  The  feeling  of  utility  would  give  character  and  at- 
tractiveness to  the  exercise  one  took  with  a  practical  end.  All  the  argu- 
ments that  have  been  advanced  for  manual  training  flow  to  the  support  of 
this  system.  The  one-sideduess  of  business  men  and  students,  their  de- 
ficiency in  manual  skill  and  lack  of  brain  culture  responding  to  manual  prac- 
tice, would  be  mitigated.  Why  should  a  man  go  irksomely  to  a  gymnasium 
for  exercise  when  a  fellow  man  in  the  neighboring  shop  has  twice  the  exer- 
cise each  day  that  he  was  made  for? 

But  how  would  it  affect  the  productive  capacity  of  the  brain  working 
managers,  for  whom  the  day  is  already  too  short  and  whose  midnights  prolong 
it,  to  subtract  some  hours  for  an  alien  occupation?  Nothing  would  more 
enhance  it.  For  now  the  manager  is  jaded  and  congested,  then  he  would 
have  freshness  and  the  energy  of  sufficient  muscular  life.  What  a  man  dpes 
is  not  so  much  a  question  of  time  consumed  on  it,  as  of  brain  condition 
brought  to  bear,  which  varies  directly  with  physical  vigor.  And  then  these 
managers  are  also  men,  sent  here  to  live,  not  to  be  scape-goats  for  the  inabil- 
ity of  others.  At  the  loss  of  some  material  products  is  it  not  their  right  to 
live  a  little  more  pleasantly  and  lastingly  in  place  of  cutting  an  air  line  to 
counting-room  glory  and  extinction?  The  costly  residence  and  fortune  of 
Thomas  Scott,  a  typical  industrialist  in  life  and  death,  remain  to  his  own  gen- 
eration and  he  is  dead,  thirty  years  too  soon.  Franklin  Gowen,  another 
manager,  born  for  eighty  years,  dies  at  fifty-four.  "Perhaps,"  the  New 
York  World  moralizes,  "he  should  be  regarded  as  another  victim  of  the 
American  pace  which  kills.  He  worked  too  hard,  crowded  too  much  into 


27 

his  life,  worried  too  much,  and — paid  the  penalty."  The  industrial  order- 
ing of  our  period  extracts  too  much  from  the  managers.  Set  life  over  against 
a  dry  goods  store,  a  thousand  miles  of  railroad,  all  the  petroleum  in  the  ground, 
the  very  world  itself,  and  what  man  would  hesitate?  Sleep  and  dynamic 
blood  are  the  price  our  managers  are  to  pay  for  their  industrial  eminence  and 
fortunes. 

But  how  does  it  occur  that  industry  hinges  all  in  all  on  a  handful  of 
captains?  In  some  lines  of  manufacture  only  a  few  producers  succeed  while 
numbers  fail  because  there  is  a  scarcity  of  capable  managers  in  their  depart- 
ments. What  is  the  cause  of  this  but  the  general  low  intellectual  level  of 
those  engaged  in  industry?  The  workers  cannot  become  intelligent.  Man- 
aging capacity  cannot  be  produced  if  each  man  works  all  day  at  one  thing. 
The  blindness  of  the  captains  is  their  own  destruction.  They  believe  in 
making  conditions  that  shall  train  for  them  the  fewest  assistants — they  call 
them  competitors — in  fabricating  what  the  world  needs,  and  so  they  take  a 
weight  upon  their  own  shoulders  that  right  soon  crushes  them  down. 

I  need  hardly  call  attention  to  the  rent  these  few  skilled  managers 
charge  for  themselves  because  they  are  few.  Rent  is  paid  for  good  land  be- 
cause good  land  is  scarce  ;  rent  likewise  has  to  be  paid  to  good  managers  be- 
cause good  managers  are  scarce.  The  good  land  is  not  responsible  for  keep- 
ing itself  scarce;  the  good  managers  make  a  special  point  of  keeping  good 
managers  scarce,  because  this  enables  those  there  are  to  collect  rent  of  the 
consumers  of  what  they  make.  It  was  never  believed  that  scarcity  of  good 
land  is  a  profitable  tiling  for  mankind,  tho  it  is  an  immensely  profitable  thing 
for  the  good  land  owners.  It  is  not  a  good  thing  for  mankind  to  have  few 
skilled  managers,  tho  it  is  financially  a  great  stroke  for  the  managers  thein- 
s.'lvrs  to  keep  down  the  supply,  and  to  rent  themselves  out  at  a  great  figure. 

Because  there  are  but  few  skilled  managers  the  product  is  small.  Con- 
sumers not  only  pay  a  high  price  for  what  they  get — this  being  scarcity  rent 
for  the  good  managers — but  they  are  denied  a  sufficiency.  Scarcity  of  mana- 
gers operates  as  a  trust :  the  out-put  is  readily  kept  so  small  as  to  yield  a 
monopoly  price. 

A  breach  in  the  ranks  of  the  industrial  captains  that  let  in  a  few  more 
captains  would  give  a  welcome  relief  to  this  over-worked  class,  tho  it  also 
diminished  their  profits.  It  is  not  worth  while  to  get  nothing  but  business 
out  of  life,  even  at  monopoly  profit.  The  objection  is  that  some  one  else  en- 
joys the  profit.  The  plan  of  having  every  one  take  a  turn  at  something 


28 

manual  each  day  solves  this  riddle  of  a  limited  captaincy.  Men  of  large 
brain  tract  brought  to  operate  mechanical  processes  will  master  them  and  re- 
lieve ,the  weary  captains.  The  workmen,  too,  will  become  a  new  race  of 
men.  Getting  a  little  bodily  reprieve,  their  minds  must  begin  to  move  and 
before  long  will  evolve  inventions  and  quicker  processes.  It  is  curious  that 
a  manager  does  not  study  the  psychology  of  his  men.  I  have  heard  working 
men  and  women  say  that  the  work  lags  toward  the  end  of  the  day,  on  account 
of  their  fatigue,  and  confess  how  they  set  their  pace  slow  in  the  morning 
when  they  are  fresh  and  husband  their  strength  for  the  long  journey.  There 
is  no  particular  economy  to  the  employer  in  this.  Boys  have  described  to  me 
the  speed  of  their  work  when  a  half  holiday  was  insight,  or  even  one  un- 
usual hour  of  vacation  before  sun-down. 

The  injury  to  men  through  minimal  division  of  labor  is  one  of  the 
heavy  indictments  against  modern  society.  The  advantages  of  division  of 
labor  are  so  great  that  we  are  not  to  relinquish  them,  but  the  hardships  that 
they  involve  we  must  remove.  Division  of  labor  is  now  division  of  occupa- 
tion and  division  of  men.  It  is  however  unnecessary  that  a  man  should  do 
the  same  work  from  dawn  till  night,  for  rotation  of  duties  is  possible,  divid- 
ing the  day  into  fourths,  and  giving,  each  man  four  specialties — to  vary  the 
monotony  and  illuminate  the  brain.  The  objections  are,  loss  of  time  in 
learning  four  arts  instead  of  one,  loss  of  time  in  changing  work,  apathy  of 
the  workmen  themselves  to  the  improvement ;  in  reply  to  which  :  the  sub- 
division of  a  process  is  quickly  learned,  fifteen  minutes  lost  in  change  twice 
a  day  would  act  like  recesses  at  school,  and  the  workmen  are  arathetic  be- 
cause they  have  lived  too  long  in  a  treadmill. 

Of  course  such  arrangement  would  be  only  the  beginning  of  economic 
rationalizing  of  industry.  After  it,  is  necessary  a  system  of  promotions 
reaching  to  the  errand  boys.  Said  a  western  employer  of  labor,  '  It  is  my 
interest  to  keep  each  of  my  men  ignorant  of  all  but  his  particular  work  ;  it  is 
their  interest  to  get  as  much  knowledge  of  the  business  as  possible  ;  and  each 
side  acts  accordingly.  If  they  become  too  versed  and  proficient  they  require 
pay  for  it,  and  I  find  it  cheaper  to  pay  them  less  and  have  them  know  less. 
The  more  they  know  the  more  consideration  they  want.  An  inside  knowl- 
edge of  the  business  makes  them  valuable  to  other  firms,  or  .dangerous  com- 
petitors. My  pol icy  is  therefore  to  restrict  their  sphere.'  This  again  illus- 
trates that,  tho  efficient  helpers  and  captains  of  industry  are  needed,  the  pres- 


29 

ent  captains  thwart  their  evolution  all  they  can.  A  man  of  the  world  said, 
'  There  are  more  men  in  business  who  do  not  advance  their  employes'  wages 
and  position  when  they  deserve  it,  than  those  who  do.'  The  government 
endorses  this  injustice.  The  head  clerk  of  a  postoffice,  who  is  kept  through 
successive  changes  of  postmasters  because  he  understands  the  business,  which 
the  postmaster  does  not,  receives  lower  salary  than  his  superior.  This  is 
discouraging  to  merit. 

A  blacksmith's  apprentice  whom  I  know  was  paid  $2.75  a  week  for  the 
first  year,  with  promise  of  one  dollar  a  week  more  yearly  until  five  years  had 
been  served.  This  reward  cannot  be  called  stimulating.  But  at  the  end  of 
the  second  year  the  employer  refused  to  make  the  stipulated  advance,  excus- 
ing himself  by  saying  that  business  was  dull.  There  seems  to  be  hardly 
anything  that  a  working-man  can  be  sure  of. 

Are  working-men  worth  no  more  at  the  end  of  ten  years  than  of  two? 
Some  say  not,  and  verily  this  may  be  true  after  ten  years  of  sordid,  spirit- 
breaking  life.  They  are  not  solicited  by  their  environment  to  become  better. 
The  compulsion  of  opportunities,  crushing  others  to  get  them,  is  an  act  of 
savages.  The  better  natures  shrink  from  this  brutal  self-assertion,  and 
consign  themselves  to  more  honorable  lowliness  if  not  extinction.  All  em- 
ployments should  be  made  schools,  educating  the  operators  from  grade  to 
grade.  Those  who  are  not  capable  of  much  progress  shall  be  rewarded  for 
faithfulness  and  length  of  service  by  increasing  pay.  The  doing  of  mechani- 
cal, disagreeable  or  monotonous  work  year  after  year,  deserves  a  rising  re- 
ward precisely  because  it  is  mechanical,  disagreeable,  or  monotonous. 

There  are  honorable  exceptions  to  this  hard  selfishness  of  the  employer 
toward  the  employed,  and  when  they  occur  they  show  how  crazy  the  old  in- 
dustrial hulk  we  are  riding  in  is,  and  how  the  wise  industrialist  will  put  off 
in  a  skiff  by  himself.  Industry  in  our  day  and  generation  is  like  unto  a  man 
who  planted  afield  and  put  no  richness  thereon,  and  when  the  harvest  time 
came  the  product  was  small.  He  starves  his  men  of  human  constituents  and 
they,  because  figs  do  not  grow  on  thistles,  starve  him  of  his  individual  pro- 
duct. The  good  industrialist  feedeth  his  flock.  It  is  great  prudence  to 
feed  one's  flock.  So  it  has  been  proved  by  the  Richards  Brothers,  who  are 
wholesale  and  retail  grocers  in  the  town  where  I  live.  If  any  one  cares  for 
worldly  prudence,  and  some  do.  they  have  proved  that  it  is  great  worldly 
pnidrncr,  and  t  his  will  ensure  its  general  adoption.  They  were  paying  their 
assistants  si  I)  a  week,  a  sum  considered  sufficient  in  these  parts.  They  raised 


30 

the  salaries  of  all  uniformly  to  $12,  without  being  solicited.  They 
give  their  men  regular  holidays  and  require  them  to  take  vacations,  and 
they  are  now  contemplating  seven  o'clock  evening  closing  of  their  retail  de- 
partment, in  the  face  of  a  backward  sentiment  of  the  community,  where 
most  stores  put  out  their  lights  at  nine  or  after.  The  employes  of  this  es- 
tablishment work  unusually  well. 

But  the  principal  effect  is  upon  the  public.  In  these  days  of  en- 
trenched selfishness  no  one  readily  fathoms  the  motive  of  a  man  who  volun- 
tarily throws  away  on  each  employe  two  dollars  a  week  more  than  he  must. 
Some  explanations  by  the  firm  disclosed  the  point.  "We  discovered," 
explained  the  Richards  Brothers,  ''that  one  of  our  men,  tho  thrifty  and 
careful,  was  able  to  save  nothing  from  his  ten  dollars  and  provide  for  his 
family.  And  yet  he  is  one  of  the  creators  of  our  income.  Is  he  not  en- 
titled to  something  more  than  a  bare  living  if  we  are  ?  "  These  employers 
do  not  have  an  inflated  opinion  of  what  they  have  done ;  they  know  that  it 
was  an  act  of  clear  justice,  not  generosity, — a  thing  they  were  bound  in 
honor  to  do.  It  had  a  bracing  influence  upon  the  other  clerks  of  the  town, 
for  some  saw  that  they  were  also  entitled  to  higher  wages,  which  their  em- 
ployers, in  consequence  of  what  the  Richards  had  done,  could  not  deny. 

The  episode  shows  how  much  more  than  words  actions  are,  and  how  the 
thinking  individual  may  walk  through  the  standing  straw  of  custom  and 
make  a  path. 

The  same  firm  has  just  established  a  reading  room  for  the  public,  in  its 
retail  store.  It  has  created  something  like  a  panic  in  domestic  circles  by 
carrying  its  respect  for  justice  home  and  paying  the  persons  who  are  usually 
called  servants  what  they  earn.  Ashtabula  is  neither  a  very  old  nor  a  very 
rich  village,  but  there  is  a  distinction  between  the  sewing-girl  and  her  mis- 
tress nevertheless.  There  is  an  upper  and  lower  class  just  as  there  is  in 
London  and  Hoochoofoo.  I  do  not  know  but  this  is  right  and  proper,  tho  I 
am  very  much  confused  to  know  which  is  upper  and  which  is  lower.  I 
have  noticed  that  the  class  which  dresses  best  and  has  the  money  is  called 
upper,  but  I  have  discovered  so  many  depravities  of  character  in  this  class, 
which  I  do  not  find  in  the  other  class,  that  I  think  a  mistake  has  surely  been 
made.  The  class  that  suffers  from  these  depravities  cannot  be  an  upper 
class,  and  the  class  that  is  without  them  is  not  a  lower  one.  Pride  is  one  of 
these  depravities, — the  people  who  have  pride  thinking  they  are  better  than 
other  people  ;  and  this  is  a  sure  mark  of  low  breeding  and  depraved  charac- 


31 

ter.  Members  of  the  "  upper  "  class  almost  always  bear  this  mark,  which 
is  a  badge  of  servility  to  base  ideas  and  of  inferior  associations.  Pride  is  the 
food  and  drink  of  the  "  upper"  class,  and  it  is  no  wonder  that  on  such  diet 
it  becomes  morally  scrofulous.  We  have  in  Ashtabula,  as  there  are,  God 
save  us!  in  other  villages,  a  number  of  persons  who  are  called  "the  better 
people."  They  are  the  people  of  "society,"  and  the  upper  class.  After 
much  reflection  and  observation  I  say  of  these  better  people  that  the  ideas 
upon  which  they  pride  themselves  and  the  attributes  by  which  they  know 
they  are  better  than  others  are  corrupting,  and  that  in  assorting  the  children 
of  the  town  their  children  must  be  marked  damaged  stock.  If  I  am  brought 
up  to  think  that  the  person  who  cooks  my  food  for  wages  is  a  less  person 
than  myself,  one  properly  relegated  to  the  kitchen  and  kitchen-chamber  and 
the  companionship  of  underlings,  my  moral  vision  is  distorted  and  I  am  con- 
demned to  degradation  of  soul  throughout  my  life.  I  like  a  man  who  goes 
heroically  down  the  decalogue,  breaking  the  whole  ten,  better  than  the  glis- 
tering better  sort,  who  are  always  at  work  on  their  social  fences  to  let  the 
proper  individuals  in  and  keep  the  improper  individuals  out.  I  know  well 
I  hat  their  ubiquitous  occupation  is  fencing  and  that  while  they  are  talking 
with  me  about  Dr.  Koch's  lymph  they  are  weighing  their  own  social  merits 
against  mine.  If  I  am  born  to  a  family  of  social  fence-makers  I  know  that 
unlrss  I  am  a  hero  of  consummate  mold  my  doom  is  written  ;  for  whether  I 
pray  at  the  church  or  entertain  a  guest  at  home  I  am  driving  a  social  picket, 
and  when  I  marry  I  am  digging  a  social  post-hole.  All  the  springs  of  the 
moral  life  of  persons  reared  to  this  occupation  are  tainted  ;  all  their  motives 
are  frivolous  and  mean,  and  they  are  hollow  and  false,  because,  for  the 
standards  of  their  conduct,  they  descend  not  into  the  mighty  realities  of  Nature, 
but  abide  in  the  senseless  proprieties  of  their  social  class.  Do  you  wonder 
why  their  children  are  rakes  and  dolls?  So  when  I  learned  that  a  family 
had  decided  to  pay  its  maid-servant  what  she  earned  I  was  not  surprised  to 
learn  soon  after  that  a  right  Christian  pledge  had  been  circulated  among  the 
all'rijrhted  house-wives  to  pay  their  kitchen  girls  not  more  than  a  dollar  and 
fifty  a  week.  I  wonder  they  did  not  bind  themselves  to  charge  their  ser- 
vants for  second-table  board  and  garret  lodging. 

The  upper  class  is  uncompanionable  because  it  has  staked  off  the  sky  of 
conversation  and  one  cannot  lead  the  talk  upon  a  vital  theme  without  com- 
ing up  against  tin-  barbed  wire  of  a  prejudice.  I  may  not  hear  the  select  in- 
formation or  the  cultivated  intonations  and  complicated  implications,  nor  be 


32 

sure  that  the  physical  postures  are  right,  but  my  soul  is  not  lacerated  with 
moral  evasions  when  I  talk  with  a  common  person  and  I  know  that  his 
means  have  not  allowed  him  to  cultivate  deception  as  an  art. 

It  is  not  always  necessary  to  go  to  Boston  or  Berlin  for  great  informa- 
tion. I  noticed  all  these  things  in  Ashtabula  ;  but  I  do  not  want  anybody 
to  think  that  Ashtabula  is  the  only  place  where  the  ' '  upper ' '  class  is  er- 
roneously called  upper.  I  have  noticed  the  same  thing  in  Saybrook  and 
Philadelphia  and  wherever  I  have  been.  I  have  learned  to  look  to  the  poor 
man  for  help  when  I  needed  it,  and  if  I  arrived  at  a  town  with  no  money  in 
my  purse  I  would  never  go  to  the  man  with  a  fine  house  or  the  minister  to 
ask  where  I  might  find  work.  Give  me  the  poor  man  for  friendship.  He 
hasn't  much  to  give  me  but  I  know  he'll  not  hesitate  to  give  that  if  I  am  in 
want.  The  rich  man  cannot  be  a  friend,  for  a  friend  is  ready  to  give  away 
everything  on  emergency.  The  genius  of  a  rich  man  is  to  keep  and  not  to 
give.  What  is  the  defining  quality  of  elevation  ?  Friendship.  Who  then 
are  the  upper  class? 

Without  a  system  of  promotions  according  to  industry  and  merit  and 
length  of  service,  the  working  people  have  nothing  to  cheer  them  on  to  ef- 
fort. Hope  is  a  great  economic  factor.  It  will  revolutionize  industry  by 
and  by  as  surely  as  electricity  will.  It  has  not  yet  been  harnessed  to  pro- 
duction. By  hope  the  middle  class,  when  they  were  poor,  invented  and 
created  the  gigantic  industries  that  bring  down  wealth  from  heaven  to  their 
owners  like  manna ;  by  hope  the  lower  class  will  find  out  how  to  make  the 
earth  a  paradise.  Only  we  must  give  them  the  gift  of  hope.  I  think  of 
the  great  wasted  powers  of  the  common  people  as  I  think  of  the  steam  that 
used  to  idle  about  the  planet  before  this  century,  conscious  of  its  latent  pow- 
ers and  chafing  for  the  birth  of  its  interpreter. 

And  on  the  other  hand  it  is  premonitory  when  the  common  people  are 
gradually  but  surely  deprived  of  that  remnant  of  hope  which  has  found 
them  in  courage  to  wait  ever  a  little  longer  for  the  day  of  deliverance.  Our 
true  rulers,  the  Goulds  and  Rockefellers,  are  taking  possession  of  one  prov- 
ince of  industry  after  another,  and  their  power  is  greater  than  all  under  or 
over  them  combined.  The  president  of  the  nation  is  their  tool  and  they  are 
a  congress  above  congress.  What  is  the  use  of  talking  about  supreme  courts 
when  these  men  are  the  supreme  courts  of  the  land  ?  Let  us  embalm  justice 
and  lay  her  away  for  an  age  when  the  billionaires  are  dead.  She  has  no 
country  and  no  home  and  no  occupation  now.  These  men  are  good  organ- 


33 

i/ers,  but  they  always  organize  selfishly.  They  are  Napoleons  in  organiza- 
tion, and  they  are  as  ruthless  of  human  life  and  happiness.  But  Napoleon 
was  providential  and  so  are  they.  Napoleon  represented  the  growing  pains 
of  European  civil  institutions,  and  they  express  the  growing  pains  of  indus- 
try. Some  few  hundred  thousand  hearts  stopped  heating,  but  I  suppose  it 
was  not  Napoleon's  business  to  care.  God  sent  Napoleon  to  do  his  work  ; 
not  to  care.  We've  strapped  up  the  young  infant  industry  until  he  can't 
grow,  and  the  Goulds  and  Rockefellers  are  cutting  the  straps.  It  seems  to 
be  almost  a  foregone  certainty,  looking  at  the  past,  that  only  hard,  selfish 
men  who  do  not  can-  can  do  these  tilings.  How  much  organi/ation  of  in- 
dustry is  being  undertaken  unselfishly? 

We  are  living  in  the  age  of  industrial  feudalism,  as  many  savants  have 
informed  us.  Kuch  factory  is  a  castle  ;  each  owner  would  like  to  extermi- 
nate the  others.  Society  is  in  a  state  of  anarchy.  A  few  of  the  barons  are 
finally  beginning  to  get  the  upper  hand.  Numerous  petty  trade  sovereigns 
have  already  been  reduced  to  vassalage.  There  will  be  soon  evolved  a  trade 
kingdom,  when  one  despot  becomes  mighty  enough  to  subjugate  his  rivals. 
Then  will  begin  the  process  of  stripping  the  king  of  his  industrial  prerog- 
atives, which  will  continue  until  he  is  as  powerless  as  the  president  of  the 
Tinted  States.  The  king  used  to  think  that  he  owned  his  realm  and  his 
subject.-:  so  seem  to  think  our  commercial  kings  that  they  own  theirs.  It 
is  not  acceptable  now  to  claim  divine  rights  for  rulers,  but  the  rights  of 
pDp.M'ty  are  still  god-given. 

After  the  lords  fought  it  out  among  themselves  in  feudal  Europe  and 
the  kings  got  themselves  established,  the  yeomanry  and  artisans  had  still  to 
b:>  heard  fro'ii.  They  were  the  material  of  our  present  society,  and  the 
process  of  retiring  the  king  and  lordling  from  the  scene  began.  Our  farm- 
ers and  artisans  are  still  to  be  heard  from  and  they  are  the  material  of  a  still 
better  society  to  come.  They  play  tin-  part  of  god  in  the  world,  being  al- 
ways unreekoned  on,  but  coming  in  at  the  right  time  to  do  the  mighty 
works  that  everyone  had  pronounced  impossible.  There  are  no  miracles  : 
anything  can  be  done  that  people  set  out  to  do. 

But  before  these  classes  arouse  themselves  from  their  lethargy  things 
usually  go  very  far  to  the  bad.  One  would  think  that  they  would  never  for 
a  moment  be  content  with  their  sinking  condition,  but  they  look  on  for  ;i 
long  time  uncomprehendingly.  For  they  still  have  hope,  the  virgin  Ameri- 
can hop"  that  :<ny  man  can  become  rich,  that  the  common  laborer  can  com- 


34 

pete  with  the  trust.  But  now  our  true  rulers  are  shattering  their  hope.  Lord 
Bacon  hath  furnished  a  prudent  and  Machiavellian  maxim  for  our  true 
rulers  the  rich,  from  which  they  are  departing  in  their  prosperous  garnering 
season  of  the  liberties  and  properties  of  their  countrymen.  He  proffers 
sound  counsels  to  rulers  for  "  removing  discontentments,  "  such  as  "to  give 
moderate  liberty  for  griefs  and  discontentments  to  evaporate  (so  it  be  without 
too  great  insolency  or  bravery)  in  a  safe  way  ;  for  he  that  turneth  the  hu- 
mors back,  and  maketh  the  wound  bleed  inwards,  endangereth  malign 
ulcers,  and  pernicious  impostumations ;"  and  he  cautions  the  rulers  that 
"the  politic  and  artificial  nourishing  and  entertaining  of  hopes,  and  carry- 
ing men  from  hopes  to  hopes,  is  one  of  the  best  antidotes  against  the  poison 
of  discontentments ;  and  it  is  a  certain  sign  of  a  wise  government  and  pro- 
ceeding when  it  can  hold  men's  hearts  by  hopes  when  it  cannot  by  satisfac- 
tion, and  when  it  can  handle  things  in  such  manner  as  no  evil  shall  appear 
so  peremptory  but  that  it  hath  some  outlet  of  hope."  *  But  our  true  ru- 
lers attend  not  to  classic  wisdom.  Great  capitals  easily  consolidate,  and 
then,  under  the  fictions  of  the  rights  of  property,  their  sovereignty  is  abso- 
lute. The  Napoleonic  law  is  that  the  greatest  capitals  pass  into  the  hands 
of  the  men  of  least  conscience,  the  Goulds  and  Rockefellers.  Then  these 
men  of  iron  selfishness  become  the  supreme  rulers  and  hope  dies  in  the  peo- 
ple. Then  it  is  that  the  miracle  is  performed,  that  the  peasants  and  arti- 
sans throw  off  their  sleep  and  cleanse  the  Augean  stables,  and  the  world  puts 
on  a  new  dress. 

Hope  might  easily  be  spared — a  deceptive  hope  it  may  be,  but  one 
that  can  "hold  men's  hearts"  in  such  manner  as  "no  evil  shall  appear  per- 
emptory. "  So  small  a  thing  as  a  system  of  promotions  may  preserve  hope, 
and  if  truly  pursued  obtain  the  substance  of  things  hoped  for. 

A  particularly  hurtful  form  of  specialization  has  entered  every  depart- 
ment of  life.  It  first  divides  life  by  a  fast  and  inflexible  line  into  two 
periods,  the  spring  of  play  and  intended  preparation,  and  the  mature  season 
of  performance.  The  distinction  is  unnatural  and  paralyzing.  It  results  in 
a  highly  organized  system  of  preparation,  but  one  at  cross  purposes  with  the 
thing  to  be  prepared  for.  After  elaborate  training  in  the  schools,  young 
men  discover  with  consternation  that  they  have  fitted  themselves  for  a  con- 
dition of  things  that  does  not  anywhere  exist,  or  anywhere  but  in  the  training 


Eeeay:     Of  Seditions  and  Troubles. 


35 

.schools  from  which  they  have  come.  Emerging  from  these  schools  they 
find  themselves  at  a  fork  in  the  highway  of  life.  Stepping  down  from  the 
artificial  to  the  actual  they  may  begin  a  second  time  their  prepar- 
tion  for  the  struggle  after  existence:  and  this  for  men  who  have 
achieved  the  summit  of  things  in  one  world  is  a  sore  requisition  indeed. 
The  educated  man  is  ready  for  no  industrial  occupation,  with  exceptions 
hardly  note-worthy. '*  It  is  humiliating  to  begin  on  the  ground,  amidst 
men  of  an  alien  and  despised  culture,  yet  conspicuously  better  in  the  one 
matter  that  there  really  counts.  Only  a  single  circumstance  softens  the 
situation  and  gives  a  lucrative  tinge  to  liberal  education,  the  circumstance 
that  education  is  so  much  the  privilege  of  the  possessing  classes;  wherefore 
during  education  friendly  companionships  are  formed  with  the  possessing 
clashes,  and  the  educated  are  subsequently  favored  in  business  at  the  ex- 
pense of  the  rest. 

Hut  there  remains  another  path,  seemingly  more  rosy  and  dignified 
than  this.  By  cleaving  to  the  ark  of  education  itself  one  may  evade  the 
irritating  delays  and  vulgar  associations  of  commercialism.  The  office  of 
education  is  like  the  ceremonial  of  a  primitive  worship,  or  the  astonishing 
inventions  of  a  secret  society.  The  training  of  an  adept  is  wonderful  and 
dillicult.  The  complicated  surprises  are  a  splendid  synthesis  of  human  in- 
genuity. But  the  crowning  marvel  is  that  all  these  fine  creations  belong  to 
dream-land  or  the  temple.  Waking  life  is  all  outside.  Albeit  in  the  very 
ha/e  and  ma/e  of  the  priestly  employment  there  is  terrestrial  compensation. 
The  carpenters  of  this  dream  life  did  not  build  without  the  perception  that 
their  livelihood  was  there.  And  they  reared  an  imaginative  edifice,  wherein 
abilities  of  strength  and  scope  would  find  vocation.  The  temple  of  educa- 
is  such  a  dove-tailed  world.  Education  has  been  brought  to  its  towering 
isolation  from  the  earth  by  a  long  line  of  professional  men,  giants,  many  of 
them,  vying  to  consummate  an  ideal  scheme.  It  is  not  of  the  earth,  but 
the  mechanics  of  this  cloud  castle  have  cast  about  it  a  mystic  dignity  that 
sanctions  its  inhabitants  to  bear  themselves  with  condescension  to  the  people 
of  the  great  actual  firmament.  Fifty  devoted  life-times  would  not  afford 
perfection  in  the  sacerdotal  duties  of  this  worship.  It  is  a  career  that  is 
unique;  its  emoluments  are  many:  and  those  who  consecrate  to  it  their  lives 
an-  exempt  from  comprehending  the  other  life,  that  of  the  millions,  beyond 

*     Tin-  ii.dnstrial  rhen)i>t.  lor 


36 

the  triangles  of  knowledge.  The  laws  that  reign  in  this  republic  of  letters 
are  not  the  laws  that  reign  in  the  republic  of  life. 

This  is  the  other  path.  One  must  select  if  he  will  cut  himself  off  from 
his  race,  choosing  the  fireside  and  tea,  to  the  wild  winds  and  life's  masculine 
struggle.  It  is  not  uninteresting  to  be  a  pillar  of  this  pseudo,  competitive 
life.  Yet  it  is  expensive  to  the  common -day  workers  who  hold  these  pillars 
up ;  and  it  is  grieving  to  realize  the  sorry  awakening  one  must  have  if  ever 
he  sets  out  across  the  space  that  divides  the  palace  of  fancies  from  the  world 
where  God  and  the  majority  live. 

Even  an  educator  may  come  out  into  the  light  and  toil  with  his 
hands.  The  sight  would  be  stimulating.  None  of  the  bibles  say  that  a 
professor  shall  always  be  trim  and  grand.  I  have  a  yearning  to  see  one  of 
them  in  a  flannel  shirt  and  blouse  going  to  a  mill  for  a  fifty  minutes'  turn  at 
labor  with  the  men  who  pay  his  salary.  It  is  the  common  workers,  you 
know,  who  pay  these  dignitaries'  salaries  at  last.  A  workingman's  garb  is 
easily  got.  If  President  Eliot  in  Boston,  President  Low  in  New  York,  and 
Presidant  Oilman  in  Baltimore  would  just  get  it  and  go  into  a  factory,  well, 
one  hour  a  month,  at  first,  until  their  muscles  hardened, — one  twelve-hour 
day  in  the  long  year — we  know  it  would  portend  an  education  a  little  unified 
with  life,  as  well  as  a  grain  of  the  new  life  we  are  always  talking  about.  For 
these  steepled  presidents  do  not  know  anything  about  real  life,  up  there 
where  they  are  ;  and  yet  they  are  the  conductors  of  the  educational  express 
train  which  advertises  to  leave  passengers  at  all  stations  on  life's  journey  in 
the  best  fashion.  Every  professor  ought  to  have  a  trade  ;  not  a  trade  that 
he  points  back  to  with  the  turgid  pride  of  a  German  princeling,  saying,  '  I 
made  this  chair,  this  whole  chair, '  and  well  might  he  add,  'and  nothing  but 
this  chair. '  A  reminiscent  trade  acts  well  its  part,  as  that  patched  marble 
shoe  on  the  Prussian  king's  statue  acts  well  its  part.  It  is  a  good  symptom 
to  patronize  trades  and  economy.  Jay  Gould,  the  American  Trade  Czar, 
with  his  mouse-trap  in  one  hand  and  transcontinental  railroads  in  the  other, 
probably  takes  pride  in  saying,  'I  have  a  trade,'  and  holds  up  his  mouse 
trap.  It  was  a  true  emblem.  Jesus  symbolized  the  net,  and  became  a  fisher 
of  men  ;  Gould  became  a  trapper  of  men. 

But  symbolic  trades  and  symbolic  labor  are  not  for  our  day.  We  are 
earnest  to  have  men  of  symmetry  produced,  and  symmetry  will  not  descend 
save  on  those  who  labor  with  their  hands  and  earn  a  part  of  what  they  cat 
and  wear  bv  this  labor.  Such  is  the  inexorable  law.  We  are  therefore  re- 


37 

quired  to  bring  our  scholars  under  the  dispensation  of  physical  service. 
"The  true  philosophers,  "  as  said  Montaigne,  "if  they  were  great  in  science, 
were  yet  much  greater  in  action.  "  Does  scholarship  grow  ever  more  com- 
plicated and  difficult  so  that  scholars  are  forbidden  to  be  philosophers  and 
may  only  drill  their  lives  away  at  one  hole?  Then  have  they  not  even 
chosen  the  economic  way  to  make  the  deepest  hole.  For  brain  workers 
think  to  accomplish  the  best  by  giving  their  uttermost  time  and  energy  to 
bruin  labor.  But  this  is  not  the  way  it  is  done.  It  is  done  by  having  an- 
other occupation,  supplementary  to  the  brain  specialty.  Actual  trial  has 
already  gone  some  way  toward  proving  this,  in  the  English  half-time  factory 
schools.  Says  Sir  Kdwin  ( 'hadwick,  "The  preponderant  testimony  is  that 
in  the  same  schools,  where  the  half-time  factory  pupils  are  instructed  with 
the  full-time  day  scholars,  the  book  attainments  of  the  half-time  scholars  are 
fully  equal  to  those  of  the  full-time  scholars,  f.  e.,  the  three  hours'  are  as 
productive  as  the  six  hours'  mental  labor  daily."  I  commend  the  chapter 
in  •  National  Health"*  from  which  this  is  taken — "The  power  to  learn 
with  health  of ebody  " — to  all  brain-workers,  but  most  of  all  to  students  and 
teachers.  The  author  finds  ground  for  asserting  "that  the  general  average 
school  time  is  in  excess  full  double  of  the  psychological  limits  of  the  ca- 
pacities of  the  average  of  children  for  lessons  requiring  mental  effort,  "  and 
for  believing  "that  the  school  and  collegiate  requirements  are  everywhere 
more  or  less  in  excess  of  psychological  limits."  So  far  as  an  individual 
may  observe  I  have  found  this  almost  uniformly  true  in  colleges  and  uni- 
versities. It  is  the  bane  of  the  life  of  a  university  that  all  are  living  to 
accomplish  something  and  none  are  living  to  live;  and  I  believe  it  is  an 
infallible  truth  that  only  by  living  to  live  will  any  man  accomplish  his 
appointed  quota.  At  .Johns  Hopkins  the  greatest  effort  is  made  by  every- 
hody  to  accomplish  something,  and  the  students  and  inferior  professors  are 
the  most  worried  and  overworked  company  I  ever  met.  It  is  perhaps  de- 
voted to  live  in  that  way — altho  not  devoted  to  anything  very  high — but  it 
is  not  life.  These  men,  and  the  Johns  Hopkins  institution,  are  all  making 
th"  mistake  that  Sir  Walter  Scott  made  when  he  fell  into  debt.  In  his  days 
of  prosperity  Sir  Walter  had  declared  of  his  daily  effort  "that  he  worked 
for  three  hours  with  pleasure,  but  that  beyond  about  four  hours  he  worked 
with  pain.  "  "  After  his  misfortunes,  however,  he  allowed  himself  no  relaxa- 

*     "National  Health"  is  I)r     Benjamin    Ward    Kic.iuirdHoif  N  abridgement    of  Sir  Edwin  Chad- 
wick  H  '-The  Health  of  Nations,"  and  is  a  hook  of  great  value. 


38 

tion,  and  there  can  be  little  doubt  that  this  over-exertion  contributed  as  much 
as  the  moral  suffering  which  he  endured  to  the  production  of  the  disease  of  the 
brain,  which  ultimately  caused  his  death.  "  *  The  Johns  Hopkins  men  are 
working  without  relaxation  and  that  is  the  spirit  of  the  institution.  They 
go  on  the  principle  of  getting  goods  and  appreciating  life  afterward.  But 
man  is  twenty-five  years  old  once  only  in  his  life,  and  when  he  is  distin- 
guished and  forty  and  has  a  salary  he  looks  about  for  the  joy  of  youth  that 
he  deferred  and  finds  that  it  belonged  to  the  years  of  youth,  years  that  are 
gone  ;  he  looks  about  for  the  compensation  of  those  surrendered  years,  and 
finds  that  he  has  distinction,  salary  and  a  little  completed  work.  Yes,  he 
has  his  work  ;  that  was  why  he  gave  away  the  joys  of  youth  while  they  were 
his  and  invited  the  pains  of  age, — he  burned  to  win  another  islet  from  the 
unknown  for  his  race  to  dwell  upon.  Years  of  soul-tumult  and  suppression 
were  his,  happiness  has  departed  forever  into  the  silent  past,  he  has  worked 
and  worked  and  is  only  on  the  threshold  of  the  task  he  promised,  the  re- 
muneration for  his  great  sacrifices.  But  he  can  still  work,  he  will  yet  gain 
the  islet.  Then  it  is  he  learns  that  with  youth  and  the  joy  of  youth  the 
power  and  joy  of  labor  departed  and  nothing  remains  but  the  dying 
dream,  distinction  bought  by  some  petty,  promising  achievments,  and  a 
salary. 

Hence  the  imposing  falsity  of  the  Johns  Hopkins  spirit  that  presses  its 
best  blood  to  toil  and  tire  and  crucify  life,  ever  straining  for  what  it  cannot 
get  except  it  be  born  to  the  knowledge  that  accomplishment  and  joy  are 
linked  to  each  other  as  brain  and  heart. 

There  are  many  things  that  the  true  scholar  would  naturally  do  if  he 
carried  out  the  ambitions  which  his  knowledge  inspires.  He  would  wish  to 
reform  the  world.  Lowly  ambition  his,  say  common  men,  enforcing  their 
brave  indifference  with  the  song — 

"do  you  dare  to  be 
Of  the  great   majority?" 

Yes,  the  scholar  dares  to  be  of  the  great  majority,  for  to-day  they  also  long 
to  reform  the  world,  their  own  world,  in  which  they  are  denied  home  and 
rest.  The  scholar  is  singular  and  illustrious  in  asking  for  the  reform,  not 
only  of  one  institution  and  some  other,  but  for  the  reform  of  the  world.  In 
olden  times  there  were  philosophers,  said  Tchernuishevsky,  in  modern  times 

*    National  Health,  p.  106. 


39 

they  of  philosophic  genius  and  spirit  are  reformers.  And  Tolstoi  with  the 
same  thought  says,  there  were  only  a  few  great  men  in  former  ages,  now  wo 
have  a  process  to  make  them  to  order.  But  the  really  great  man  may 
always  be  known,  lie  is  constrained  by  the  eternal  forces  in  him  to  improve 
his  sphere. 

Sliull  we  ask  then  why  the  American  scholar  "shined  upon  by  all  the 
stars  of  God,  "  does  not  leap  to  the  acceptance  of  this  splendid  mission? 
We  pause  before  descending  from  these  magnetic  batteries  of  genius  whom 
tlio  cold  night  of  hunger  and  opposition  can  only  animate  and  gladden  on 
their  predestined  course,  to  the  sedentary  absorption  of  the  scholarly  ma- 
jority in  the  matter  of  daily  bread.  We  cannot  tell  how  much  of  their 
moral  disability  and  inaction  is  depravement  of  physical  tone,  the  discord 
and  frailty  of  tissues  that  have  aged  too  early  because  the  scholar  had  no 
trade  or  play  to  relax  and  spare  him.  But  it  is  certain  that  the  secret  of 
the  moral  sterility  of  our  scholars  has  some  manner  of  connection  with  this 
<|iuMion  of  bread.  Nowhere  have  our  thinkers  achieved  perfect  inde- 
pendence; they  must  still  ponder  the  reception  of  their  thought,  asking 
themselves  timorously  as  each  word  is  written  if  it  will  depress  the  sale  of 
the  book,  <>r  if  the  president  of  their  college  can  withstand  the  indignation 
of  the  church-goers  or  capitalists  after  that  cautiously  progressive  sentiment 
is  published.  The  offended  public  can  deprive  them  of  a  laboratory  and 
leisure  to  investigate  and  a  salary  to  buy  bread,  if  they  do  not  honey  their 
words  and  exhibit  their  advanced  opinions  to  the  world  through  a  smoked 
glass.  I  am  afraid  the  Hebrew  prophets  and  very  few  of  the  Greek  phil- 
osophers would  have  made  good  American  university  professors.  Progress 
is  painfully  won  in  a  system  organized  to  starve  progressive  and  non-con- 
forming thinkers.  But  it  happens  to  have  been  so  always,  with  the  quali- 
lication  that  in  some  ages  the  innovators  have  not  been  given  time  to  starve. 
Kenan  has  beautifully  described  the  never-ceasing  play  of  this  principle,  his 
subject  being  the  conviction  of  .Jesus: — 

••Starling  from  principles  accepted  at  the  outset  by  all  ancient  polity, 
llanan  and  Caiaphas  wore  right  in  saying:  'Better  the  death  of  one  man 
than  the  ruin  of  a  people. '  This  reasoning  seems  to  us  detestable.  But 
this  reasoning  has  been  that  of  all  conservative  parties  from  the  origin  of 
human  societies.  'The  party  of  order'  (I  use  this  expression  in  the  mean 
and  narrow  sense)  hasalwavs  been  the  same.  Thinking  that  the  final  word 


40 

of  government  is  to  check  popular  emotions,  it  believes  that  it  is  doing  an 
act  of  patriotism  when  it  prevents  by  juridical  murder  the  tumultuous  effu- 
sion of  blood.  Little  thoughtful  of  the  future,  it  dreams  not  that  by  declar- 
ing war  against  all  progress,  it  runs  the  risk  of  wounding  the  idea  which  is 
destined,  some  day,  to  triumph.  The  death  of  Jesus  was  one  of  the 
thousand  applications  of  this  polity.  "  * 

How  to  obtain  for  the  thinker  immunity  from  this  law,  that  is  the 
question  which  presses  for  an  answer  amid  great  difficulties.  He  must  have 
a  material  basis  of  life  beyond  patronage — for  the  endower  of  a  college  chair 
and  the  president  who  selects  its  occupant  are  patrons  of  the  incumbent ;  he 
must  make  his  wants  few  and  simple  and  learn  to  live  by  his  hands.  He 
may  eat  bread  and  drink  water  in  a  loft  but  he  will  throw  his  smoked 
glass  out  the  window  ;  he  may  spend  less  hours  at  his  desk  and  books,  but 
his  work  will  be  more  choice  and  enduring. 

The  world  is  flooded  with  books  where  common -places  are  elaborately 
said.  The  Book  of  Daniel  was  not  long,  still  briefer  was  the  sermon  on  the 
mount  ;  the  writings  of  Descartes,  which  were  the  germ  of  modern  phil- 
osophy, are  soon  read  through.  These  men  meditated,  mastered  the  art  of 
pregnant  brevity  by  right  brain  usage,  and  having  said  a  few  immensely 
potent  words  left  all  mankind  to  be  their  commentators  and  elongators. 
They  will  have  health  ;  their  words  will  shimmer  with  the  sunshine  in  their 
blood.  They  will  be  free  ;  there  shall  be  for  them  no  more  groping  in  in- 
tellectual and  moral  night,  the  star  of  God  in  their  spirits  shall  lead  them. 
They  will  live  in  life,  belonging  to  the  great  majority,  receiving  thence  the 
secrets  of  the  Time-Spirit,  doing  it's  behests.  You  may  ask  what  would  be- 
come of  our  institutions  if  our  profoundest  minds  abandoned  them  for  the 
Alpine  paths  of  independence  :  I  do  not  care  what  becomes  of  our  institu- 
tions ;  if  truth  and  character  are  hounded  to  bush  to  die  there,  they  are 
pretentious  lies.  Our  institutions  must  go  through  the  fire  of  change  before 
they  can  serve  life,  and  I  have  little  love  for  them  as  they  are.  The  World 
is  the  University.  I  long  for  the  time  when  the  highest  minds  shall  turn 
their  backs  on  these  fine  stone  piles  mis-called  universities. 

Would  there  be  some  postponement  of  scientific  discovery?  It  would 
be  temporary.  And  in  its  place  we  should  have  great  lives  and  inspiration 
and  then  redoubled  discovery.  All  of  scientific  discovery  is  for  what  but 

*    "Life  of  Jesus,"    Tr.  p.  310. 


41 

the  eventual  obtaining  of  great  lives?  We  put  their  coming  afar  off,  and 
apply  ourselves  sordidly  to  contriving  means.  But  there  are  present  ever 
wings  for  the  highest  flights.  There  were  great  men  in  the  time  of  Abra- 
ham. Scientific  research  can  flourish  only  under  the  tutilage  of  the  superior 
minds,  and  shackles  are  no  magnet  for  superior  minds.  The  alternative 
being  solitude  and  royal  independence  of  life  away  from  the  foundations 
for  research,  or  constricted  character  as  the  buying  price  of  their  privileges, 
the  profounder  heads  must  leave  the  alluring  places  for  shallow  brains  and 
nurture  research  on  the  everlasting  hills  of  freedom.  It  is  probable  that  no 
capitalist  will  build  a  memorial  hall  on  these  foundations  nor  endow  them 
with  a  telescope,  but  the  stars  will  shine  in  there  and  God  will  be  visible 
without  lenses.  The  way  to  abundant  (eternal)  life  is  direct.  Our  thou- 
sand painful  years  of  research  in  the  vestibule  are  noble,  but  the  serene 
tones  of  life's  grand  organ  sink  and  swell  within,  and  before  the  thousand 
years  are  gone  we  shall  be  dead.  Must  we  do  penance  a  thousand  years? 
There  is  a  way  to  cheat  time  and  enter  the  portals  and  live  the  life  of  a 
thousand  years  hence  in  the  days  that  are  ours.  We  can  imagine  the  per- 
fect life,  the  time  when  youth  shall  run  its  glad  course  up  to  ninety  years 
and  care  shall  not  cark,  when  the  meridian  of  life  shall  be  one  hundred  and 
peace  shall  mantle  the  declining  days  of  a  century  of  old  age.  We  can 
imagine  the  unselfishness  of  the  perfect  life  when  burrowing  science  shall 
have  built  its  vast  mound.  But  we  need  not  wait.  We  can  be  as  unselfish 
now  as  all  will  be  in  a  thousand  years.  Life  is  within  us.  We  may  build 
our  own  lu-aven  there  as  the  birds  nest  in  the  wide-armed  oak.  We  may 
live  in  this  blind,  supplicating  time  by  the  laws  of  the  winged  fancy  that 
seeth  earth  and  heaven  and  hell  in  its  flight.  Shall  we  die  without  one 
glimpse  and  trial  of  paradise?  We  are  at  the  gate ,  the  gate  stands  open, 
one  word  decides  all  now  and  forever, — courage. 

I  distinctly  see  a  loss  of  touch  with  his  fellows  for  one  who  can  say  this 
word.  I  see  no  stopping  place  if  the  career  is  begun,  no  slippered  ease,  no 
liranli,  no  purse.  But  I  see  peace,  an  occasional  friend  dearer  than  the  hom- 
age of  millions,  and  a  surpassing  certainty  that  life  has  not  been  given  to  the 
dogs.  Hani  an<l  stony  the  way  to  the  physical  feet,  but  withal  the  physical  joy 
and  power  of  the  mountaineer,  and  in  the  soul  the  wisdom  and  consciousness 
and  happiness  of  all  the  centuries  to  come.  "  I  know  the  difficulties  will  be 
upon  me  presently,"  writes  one  who  has  entered  the  upland  path.  "Has 
anyone  who  left  the  lowlying  'broad  road.'  dusty  with  over  travel,  failed  to 


42 

meet  them?  I  am  not  too  brave,  and  I  own  lam  afraid  of  the  whirlwinds  and 
the  rocky  climb.  But  the  fever-damp  in  the  valley  !  I  can  see  the  deathf ul 
vapors  rising  there — if  I  am  afraid  to  go  forward,  how  dare  I  turn  back?" 
But  the  duty  of  the  thinker  to  industrial  life  is  something  higher  than 
the  expediency  of  an  independent  livelihood.  Some  of  the  disagreeable 
manual  work  of  the  world  belongs  to  him .  It  may  be  shirked,  those  who 
could  have  ever  shirked  it,  but  only  by  incurring  a  debt  sometime  to  be 
paid.  The  time  to  balance  this  particular  account  has  seemingly  arrived. 
Some  have  done  the  degrading  toil  of  the  race,  toil  that  was  degrading  not 
because  it  was  toil  nor  manual  or  uncomfortable,  but  because  it  was  excessive 
and  devoured  all  time  and  capacity  to  improve.  Others  have  gone  scot 
free,  speeding  along  the  track  of  culture,  toward  the  goal  of  humanity. 
But  it  is  written  that  in  this  race  all  shall  come  in  together,  neck  to  neck. 
The  course  of  culture  wheels  back  upon  itself,  and  now  we  find  the  masses 
to  whom  we  had  left  the  harsher  functions  of  life,  straining  their  difficult 
way  onward,  in  our  front  and  we  cannot  pass  them.  What  we  have  won 
by  excelling  them  the  eternal  laws  now  require  for  them  or  we  shall  all  tarry 
long  at  this  station.  The  debt  is  now  to  be  paid  ;  all  the  long  sad  outlay  of 
these  common  ones  for  our  progress  is  to  be  reimbursed.  They  never  vol- 
unteered to  degrade  themselves  for  our  culture,  we  compelled  it.  We  tried 
to  get  something  for  nothing ;  but  we  cannot  cheat  God.  Our  culture  is 
only  a  mask.  What  is  the  state  of  soul  of  those  behind  the  mask  whose 
handsome  gilding  has  been  purchased  by  the  sorrows  of  many  billions 
through  ages  and  ages?  We  must  pay  the  debt,  giving  them  all  that  their 
denial  has  given  us.  We  must  lift  from  them  the  curse  of  degrading  toil, 
taking  it  equally  upon  ourselves,  making  it  for  all  an  education  and  glory. 
Mere  hewers  of  wood  and  drawers  of  water  shall  be  known  on  the  earth  no 
more. 

With  the  energy  peculiarly  his,  Tolstoi  has  exposed  the  ordering  of 
life  by  the  law  of  division  of  labor,  when  sonic  stake  off  for  their  private 
occupancy  the  intellectual  field,  and  pay  over  a  precarious  living  and 
assured  premature  dying  to  those  whom  they  leave  outside  in  the  wilderness 
of  drudgery.  "Division  of  labor!"  he  exclaims,  with  a  sense  of  the  ex- 
travagant irony  of  the  situation.  "Some  are  busied  in  mental  or  moral, 
others  in  muscular  or  physical,  labor.  With  what  confidence  people  enun- 
ciate this!  They  wish  to  think  so,  and  it  seems  to  them  that,  in  point  of 
fact,  a  perfectly  regular  exchange  of  services  dors  take  place But  it  is 


43 

impossible  for  us  to  wink  at  it,  for  our  last  justification  is  slipping  from 
beneath  our  feet.  We  have  become  specialized.  We  have  our  particular 
functional  activity.  We  are  the  brains  of  the  people.  They  support  us, 
and  we  have  undertaken  to  teach  them.  It  is  only  under  this  pretense  that 
we  have  excused  ourselves  from  work.  But  what  have  we  taught  them, 
and  what  we  are  we  now  teaching  them?  They  have  waited  for  years — for 
tens,  for  hundreds  of  years.  And  we  keep  on  diverting  our  minds  with 
chatter,  and  we  instruct  each  other,  and  we  console  ourselves,  and  we  have 
utterly  forgotten  them.  We  have  so  entirely  forgotten  them,  that  others 
have  undertaken  to  instruct  them,  and  we  have  not  even  perceived  it.  We 
have  spoken  of  the  division  of  labor  with  such  lack  of  seriousness,  that  it  is 
obvious  that  what  we  have  said  about  the  benefits  which  we  have  conferred 
on  the  people  was  simply  a  shameless  evasion.  " 

But  there  is  a  conception  abroad  that  the  gracious  acceptance  of  indus- 
trialism is  a  tendency  toward  materialism  and  the  vulgarization  of  life.  A 
few  years  ago  Mr.  Charles  Dudley  Warner  issued  a  protest  against  "The 
Demand  of  the  Industrial  Spirit,"  f  maintaining  truly  that  we  are  in  the 
stream  of  a  movement  'toward  every  sort  of  material  development  and  ad- 
vancement, toward  the  sort  of  education  only  that  can  be  made  immediately 
serviceable  to  material  ends. '  He  censures  the  materialistic  spirit  which 
4  insists  that  the  knowledge  of  how  to  shoe  and  cure  a  horse^  set  type,  build 
a  railway,  assay  metals,  suit  fertilizers  to  soils,  conduct  a  business,  is  an  edu- 
cation ;  and  if  you  throw  in  a  modern  language  or  two,  a  liberal  education, ' 
and  to  save  the  higher  life  it  seems  to  him  "that  just  at  this  moment  there 
is  nee<l  of  insisting  upon  the  importance  in  life  of  a  pure  intellectual  culture 
for  as  many  persons  as  can  obtain  it,  and  of  supplementing  the  practical 
training  with  the  intellectual  culture  whenever  possible.  "  But  it  has  es- 
caped Mr.  Warner  that  this  pure  intellectual  culture  has  itself  become 
material  in  the  most  degrading  manner.  It  is  in  these  days  as  much  the 
part  of  good  husbandry  to  address  oneself  to  the  constructions  of  Greek 
syntax  as  it  is  to  shoe  or  cure  a  horse,  and,  remembering  the  economic  value 
of  respectability,  it  is  immensely  more  remunerative.  I  am  compelled  to  be- 
lie" ve  from  the  conduct  of  their  lives  that  the  spirit  of  the  average  irrarnma- 
rian  and  Hth-niti-tir,  when  denuded  of  the  classic  garb  of  expression  and 

i 

*     "What  to  Do?1'  ppH.  191-193. 

\»i'lh    .\-n»rii;n,    U.mn-.     Sept.   1*-H. 


44 

withdrawn  from  the  softened  lights  #nd  incense  of  the  scholarly  atmosphere, 
is  as  gross  and  grovelling  as  the  spirit  of  the  master  of  a  brick  yard  or  car 
company.  If  an  advanced  course  in  Latin,  mathematics,  or  physical 
science  leaves  the  mind  on  the  same  level  of  ideas  and  action  as  the  mind  of 
an  iron-master,  what  profiteth  these  spiritual  disciplines  more  than  the  ma- 
terial and  hypothetically  vulgarizing  one  of  improving  steel?  And  I  find 
the  scholar  and  commercial  manager  of  a  piece.  It  is  not  by  the  introduc- 
tion of  technical  and  mechanical  interests  that  our  seminaries  of  learning  are 
being  vulgarized,  as  they  steadily  and  surely  are ;  it  is  by  reducing  learning 
to  the  commercial  level  of  commercial  profit  that  they  are  being  hopelessly 
vulgarized.  I  do  not  wish  to  exaggerate,  but  I  say  without  hope  of  contra- 
diction— and  it  is  the  pride  of  these  institutions  that  the  saying  cannot  be 
contradicted — that  the  highest  motive  of  our  universities  is  to  help  men  to 
climb  up  to  pay  and  popular  consideration.  What  more  vulgar  is  there  in 
the  purpose  of  a  banker  or  bridge-builder?  If  any  one  has  perchance  in- 
clinations to  develop  faculties  that  are  not  exchangeable  for  dollars,  the 
university  has  cold  encouragement  for  him ;  and  indeed  well  it  may  have, 
for  it  is  conscious  of  no  aptitude  for  this  higher  culture  and  it  knows  not 
what  to  do  with  one  who  cannot  be  appeased  with  its  pretenses  of  higher  cul- 
ture, and  deadening,  spirit-starving  routine.  Poets,  reformers,  philosophers 
and  philosophical  scientists  linguists  and  educators,  the  universities  of  our 
day  cannot  produce.  They  can  produce  scientists  and  linguist  and  educators 
whom  you  like  to  meet  as  you  do  your  physician,  when  technical  and  ab- 
struse matters  need  diagnosing. 

The  solution  of  the  great  riddle  of  life,  which  this  question  of  sounder 
education  permanently  is,  lies  not  in  *  a  pure  intellectual  culture  for  as  many 
as  can  obtain  it, '  in  '  ballooning '  them  out  of  the  so-called  material  and 
vulgar  to  make  intellectual  saints  and  celibates  of  them,  but  in  education  of 
commingled  material  and  intellectual  culture,  setting  them  free  from  the 
material  through  participation  and  comprehension  and  mastery  of  it,  by  full 
payment  of  their  debt  to  it,  from  which  none  may  ever  be  exempt  here, 


Education  and  Power. 


i 

SCIENCE  AND  VITALITY. 

The  particular  point  of  attack  upon  women  for  indulging  in  higher 
education  is  her  damage  to  posterity,  if  she  retains  the  power  of  posterity. 
Sonic  of  the  last  words  of  warning  come  from  Mr.  Grant  Allen,  being: 
"Emancipate  women  (if  women  will  let  you,  which  is  more  than  doubtful) 
but  leave  her  woman  still,  not  a  dulled  and  spiritless  epicene  automaton. 
Tliis  last,  it  is  to  be  feared,  is  the  one  existing  practical  result  of  the  higher 
education  of  women,  up  to  date.  Both  in  England  and  America,  the  women 
of  the  cultivated  classes  are  becoming  unfit  to  be  wives  or  mothers.  Their 
sexuality  (which  lies  at  the  basis  of  everything)  is  enfeebled  or  destroyed. 
In  some  cases  they  eschew  marriage  altogether  —  openly  refuse  and  despise 
it,  which  surely  shows  a  lamentable  weakening  of  wholesome  feminine  in- 
stincts. In  other  cases,  they  marry,  though  obviously  ill  adapted  to  bear 
the  strain  of  maternity  ;  and  in  such  instances  they  frequently  break  down 
with  the  birth  of  their  first  or  second  infant.  "  * 

This  concerns  higher  education,  but  it  is  a  fact  very  well  attested  that 
the  excessive  study  or  anxiety  of  girls  in  the  earlier  schools,  during  the 
years  when  the  reproductive  organs  are  forming,  often  prevents  these  organs 
From  coming  to  maturity  and  the  future  woman  is  sexless. 

The  evil  consequences  of  the  over-study  and  confinement  and  insuf- 
ficient muscular  movement  of  girls  and  young  women  have  been  more  writ- 
ten of  lately  than  the  injuries  that  boys  and  young  men  sustain  from  the 
same  causes.  As  concerns  women  there  has  been  no  exaggeration,  but  the 
case  has  not  been  treated  with  equal  vigor  concerning  men.  It  is  quite  as 
true  to  say  that  men  who  have  hopelessly  undermined  their  physical  vitality 
in  school  and  lecture  rooms  should  never  think  of  becoming  fathers,  as  to 
say  I  hat  women  unsexed  bv  education  should  not  try  to  be  mothers.  Less 


"Plain  Word*  on  the  Woman  question.  "     Forhiiylitl  u  Hir'nir.  1S8!) 


46 

attention  is  given  the  harm  that  overtakes  young  men  and  boys,  they  being 
thought  able  to  take  care  of  themselves,  and  because  the  integrity  of  the 
educational  system  is  supposed  to  be  paramount  to  some  male  sacrifices. 

There  is  no  limit  to  what  a  studious  boy  will  undertake.  His  whole 
being  is  disgraced  if  he  feels  that  he  is  not  accomplishing  the  expectation  of 
his  teacher,  and  in  his  young  inexperience  he  does  not  question  that  all 
required  of  him  is  rightfully  required.  This  is  where  he  passes  onto  unsafe 
ground,  for  the  opinion  created  around  him  by  teachers  and  professors  is  all 
against  observing  the  limits  of  nature. 

Apply  the  consequences  of  this  contempt  of  nature  to  the  next  genera- 
tion and  the  next.  A  proportion  of  those  best  fitted  by  heredity  to  improve 
under  education  will  render  themselves  puny  and  transmit  to  descendants 
physical  energy  so  diminished  that  the  latter  will  not  be  able  to  build  upon 
the  foundations  of  culture  laid  with  such  infinite  pain  and  sacrifice  by  their 
fathers.  The  mental  and  moral  powers  of  the  second  generation  will  be  less 
through  the  physical  deterioration  with  which  the  parents  unwittingly  af- 
flicted themselves.  Thus  the  principle  of  heredity,  instead  of  being  em- 
ployed to  aid  a  growing  culture,  is  arrayed  against  it  and  what  should  be  a 
tide  of  improvement  in  educated  families,  rising  steadily  through  genera- 
tions, is  a  series  of  waves,  the  youth  of  new  families  coming  on  continually 
to  replace  the  shattered  fragments  of  the  families  preceding  them. 

It  has  been  remarked  that  the  presumably  natural  course  of  heredity 
seems  often  to  swerve  in  children  of  the  best  educated  people,  and  this  may 
be  due  to  a  deterioration  of  the  parent  through  literary  excesses.  There  are 
no  statistics  of  those  injured  by  literary  excess.  Isolated  physicians  have 
their  own  records  of  cases  and  occasionally  write  on  the  basis  of  their  ex- 
perience, but  no  scientific  attempt  has  been  made  to  estimate  the  collective 
damage.  In  some  minds — fairly  intelligent  ones  too — the  subject  occa- 
sions levity.  An  opinion  holds  that  young  men  are  naturally  too  lazy  to 
overwork.  Moreover  those  hurt  while  young  are  not  distinguished  enough 
to  be  observed  and  mourned  beyond  a  small  circle  ;  of  the  older  and  distin- 
guished it  is  said  that  they  were  old  enough  to  be  wise.  On  the  whole  few 
cases  of  injury  are  recognized  for  what  they  really  are,  the  most  of  these  are 
forgotten,  especially  when  the  old  health  is  apparently  regained,  and  ata- 
vism in  the  children  of  educated  people  is  therefore  attributed  to  every  cause 
but  this  true  one,  or  its  explanation  is  supposed  to  be  hidden  in  those  oh- 


47 

scure  regions  of  heredity  not  yet  conquered.  Often,  I  apprehend,  the  cause 
is  on  the  hither  side  of  the  unthreaded  labyrinth,  and  is  only  the  physical 
depravity  of  parents  who  consumed  in  disastrous  ventures  at  brain-building, 
stamina  that  was  the  inalienable  right  of  posterity,  if  posterity  they  were 
to  have. 

I  arn  not  pretending  that  this  is  a  universal  rule  with  educated  families. 
There  are  families  that  thrive  and  branch  from  generation  to  generation. 
The  sons  and  daughters  keep  within  the  lines  of  accumulating  development 
laid  down  by  nature.  But  there  is  never  certainty  of  continued  immunity, 
for  as  the  successive  youths  go  into  the  temptations  of  a  system  that  is 
increasing  its  ten-ion  faster  than  its  safe-guards  the  chances  that  members 
of  resisting  families  will  fall  increase. 

The  proportion  of  serious  students  made  degenerate  by  education  has  at 
least  been  guessed  at.  Guizot  is  recorded  assaying  in  epigramatic  language 
that  •  OIK  -third  of  the  university  students  of  Europe  die  prematurely  from 
the  etfeets  of  bad  habits  acquired  at  college;  one-third  die  prematurely  from 
the  elfeets  of  close  confinement  at  their  studies;  and  the  other  third  govern 
Europe.'  (tui/ot's  estimate  of  the  expense  of  education  when  made  a  vice, 
if  near  the  truth,  does  not  fully  represent  the  energy  neutralized,  for  it  does 

not  take  con>iderati f  the  detriment  sustained  by  those  still  keeping  force 

enough  to  lead  Knrope.  The  death  of  eminent  scientists  in  middle  life  or 
early  old  age  is  partially  traceable  to  this  cause.  Four  recent  names  may 
be  mentioned.  Stanley  Jevons,  T.  H.  Green,  George  S.  Morris  and  O.  H. 
Mitchell,  and  the  problem  is,  were  they  prematurely  lost  to  leadership  in 
thought  though  unsound  education?  The  imperfect  health  of  Charles  Dar- 
win is  cited  to  show  the  vast  working  possibilities  of  a  physically  feeble 
man,  and  some  one  has  observed  that  a  notably  large  number  of  the  great 
modern  men  have  combatted  ill-health.  In  1<S(>4,  after  an  illness  of  several 
months  in  which  all  labor  had  been  suspended,  Darwin  wrote  to  a  friend 
concerning  his  work  on  'Animals  and  Plants,'  "(iod  knows  when  the  book 
will  ever  be  completed,  for  I  find  that  1  am  very  weak  and  on  my  best  days 
cannot  do  more  than  one  or  one  and  a  half  hours'  work/'  Could  the 
drag  of  plivsical  failure  have  been  escaped  by  these  intellectual  rulers  of 
Europe  and  America  the  world  must  have  gained  immeasurably  by  their 
better  service. 

*     IAf<  ,i,,,/  L,/t<  it.  vol.  in,  oh.  i. 


48 

The  immense  achievements  of  Goethe  during  the  second  half  of  his  life 
are  referred  to  by  his  biographer  Grimm  to  show  the  advantage  that  long 
life  gave  him  over  other  men  of  genius  who  have  died  or  aged  young. 
"Goethe,"  this  biographer  says,  "had  a  twofold  life  measured  out  to  him, 
whose  latter  half,  indeed,  proved  most  important  to  the  full  completion  of 
that  which  he  had  begun  in  the  earlier  part.  He  was  allowed  to  enter  into 
the  enjoyment  of  a  secure  and  undisturbed  inheritance  of  the  conquests  of 
his  youth,  as  if  he  were  his  own  heir  and  successor  to  the  throne.  To  how 
few  has  been  granted  this  privilege  !  The  latter  half  of  the  lives  of  Les- 
sing  and  Herder  was  blighted.  Schiller  began  gradually  to  die  just  as  he 
was  beginning  really  to  live  ;  just  as  he  had  begun  to  unfold  his  capacities, 
and  freely  to  make  the  most  of  his  creative  power.  We  recall  the  names  of 
many  others,  whose  career  was  interrupted  before  their  fortieth  year,  al- 
though they  seemed  to  possess  a  vigor  which  should  not  have  been  exhausted 
in  double  that  number  of  years."  *  The  progress  of  Goethe  was  never 
"interrupted  by  useless  delays,  to  which  he  must  look  back  as  upon  so 
much  lost  time.  He  was  healthy,  handsome,  and  vigorous.  "  Schiller,  on 
the  other  hand,  "worked  feverishly,  "  "the  grandest  productions  of  his  life 
were  crowded  into  ten  wretched  years, "  "one  day  the  golden  store  was  ex- 
hausted ;  there  was  a  sudden  close  as  with  Byron,  Raphael,  Mozart.  Had 
these  lived  slower,  they  might  perhaps  have  overcome  the  fell  disease  which 
destroyed  them  ;  but  they  had  lived  too  fast,  too  extravagantly,  to  have 
anything  in  reserve  for  such  an  emergency."  And  Grimm  adds  regret- 
fully, "One  always  has  the  feeling  that  there  was  some  mistake  about  Schil- 
ler's early  death, — as  if  the  misfortune  might  have  been  averted.  "  f 

How  are  the  offspring  affected  by  this  fast  literary  living?  Are  the 
children  born  before  the  deadly  consequences  of  physical  heedlessness  have 
progressed  far  enough  in  the  parents  to  be  inherited?  It  is  altogether  un- 
likely. The  eagerness  of  capable  brain  workers  is  so  great  that  it  commonly 
drives  them  to  early  intellectual  debauchery  ;  the  irreparable  hurt  that 
causes  untimely  death,  or  that  blights  the  latter  half  of  powerful  lives  as 
Lessing's  and  Herder's  were  blighted,  that  makes  them  bring  to  their  ma- 
ture work  constitutions  already  exhausted,  like  Schiller,  so  that  'just  as 
they  are  beginning  really  to  live  they  begin  gradually  to  die, '  this  irremc- 

*    Life  and  Times  of  Goethe.    Tr.  p.  <). 
t     The  same,  pp.  417,  418,  419. 


diablc  wound  they  have  often  inflicted  on  themselves  during  the  years  of 
youth  and  preparation,  before  they  have  discovered  the  laws  of  intellectual 
increase  and  achievement.  Their  children  are  certain  to  reflect  in  a  dimmer 
spark  of  vitality  the  deterioration  of  the  parents. 

An  index  of  vital  energy  is  the  reproductive  power.  From  investiga- 
ting the  families  of  English  men  of  science  Mr.  Galton  findsthatthe  fertility 
of  the  parents  of  these  scientific  men  exceeded  their  own  fertility,  the 
families  of  their  parents  being  unusually  large,  and,  the  average  taken, 
larger  than  their  own.  *  'This  implied  diminution  of  fertility  as  compared 
with  that  of  their  own  parents  confirms  the  common  belief  in  the  tendency 
to  an  extinction  of  men  who  work  hard  with  the  brain. '  As  a  provisional 
explanation  of  the  falling  oil'  of  the  offspring  of  scientific  men  Mr.  Galton 
observes  that  "a  n/trfirc  deficiency  of  health  and  energy,  in  respect  to  that 
of  their  own  parents,  is  very  common  among  them.  Their  absolute  health 
and  energy  may  be  high,"  he  says,  "far  exceeding  those  of  people  gener- 
ally ;  but  I  speak  of  a  noticeable  falling  off  from  the  yet  more  robust  con- 
dition of  the  previous  generation  :  it  is  this  which  appears  to  be  dangerous 
to  the  continuance  of  the  race."  The  figures  also  give 'the  remarkable 
result  that  there  are  no  children  at  all  in  one  out  of  every  three  of  these 
eame.' 

This  applies  to  our  investigation  in  the  following  manner.  If  these 
vigorous  men  of  science  have  lapsed  from  the  robust  condition  of  their  par- 
ents to  the  extent  of  lessening  their  fertility,  we  may  be  sure  that  their 
'  relative  deficiency  of  health  and  energy'  will  manifest  itself  in  the  health 
and  energy  of  their  offspring  as  well  as  in  the  number  of  their  offspring.  If 
these  children  adopt  the  vocation  of  their  parents  they  bring  to  it  feebler 
constitutions  than  their  parents,  and  they  make  the  same  demands  upon  their 
vitality.  What  wears  upon  a  rugged  man  wears  more  upon  a  frailer  one, 
and  the  number  and  strength  of  their  offspring  must  be  less  relatively  to 
their  parents  than  those  of  their  parents  were  to  their  grand-parents.  It 
remains  for  the  children  or  grand-children  of  scientific  men  to  pursue  science 
with  more  moderation,  to  abandon  science  for  a  more  healthful  occupation, 
or  to  anticipate  descendants  who  will  have  no  choice  but  to  renounce  the  in- 
tellectual life,  and  whose  vigor  will  not  sustain  them  in  any  important 
undertaking.  If  in  the  first  generation  'there  are  no  children  at  all  in  one 

*     Kmjli*li  M<- n  »1   -SY///MV-.    ch.  i. 


50 

out  of  every  three  of  the  cases  studied, '  in  the  second  generation  it  is  likely 
that  there  will  be  children  in  one  out  of  every  four  or  five  cases  only. 

Mr.  Galton  in  his  investigation,  seems  to  have  omitted  one  factor  that 
is  influential.  In  considering  the  diminished  number  of  children  of  the  able 
men  of  science  he  seeks  for  an  explanation  only  in  the  fathers,  omitting 
reference  to  the  mothers.  But  a  relative  inferiority  of  the  wives  of  scientific 
men  to  the  mothers  of  these  men  would,  if  it  exists,  account  for  some 
portion  of  the  falling  off  of  their  families.  Now,  taking  the  average  of 
both,  such  an  inferiority  probably  does  exist.  For  to  produce  the  excep- 
tional powers  which  the  men  of  science  inherited,  both  parents  must  as  a 
rule  have  had  unusual  vigor.  That  they  have  unusual  vigor  may  be  easily 
shown  from  Mr.  Galton 's  data.  He  finds  ''only  two  cases,  neither  very 
strongly  marked,  in  which  both  parents  are  described  as  unhealthy."  So 
much  is  direct  statement.  He  further  finds  that  'the  returns  seem  to  show 
that  the  issue  of  these  marriages — those  in  which  both  parents  are  unhealthy 
— are  barely  capable  of  pushing  their  way  to  the  front  ranks  of  life, ' 
whereas  on  the  other  hand  '  the  health  of  the  men  in  his  list  is  remarkable, 
only  one  quarter  making  complaints  or  reservations, '  and  the  inference  is 
that  since  great  scientific  attainment  has  a  close  connection  writh  health, 
the  parents  between  them  must  have  possessed  physical  health  in  an  uncom- 
mon degree.  And  since  "all  statistical  data  concur  in  proving  that  healthy 
persons  are  far  more  likely  than  others  to  have  healthy  progeny,  "  wre  may 
conclude  that  "the  exceptionally  good  physique  of  scientific  men"  *  could 
only  seldom  have  arisen  with  one  parent  unhealthy,  and  that  it  was  the  for- 
tunate union  of  two  vigorous  individuals  that  endowed  them  with  their 
unusual  energy.  Although  health  in  both  the  parents  does  not  insure  emi- 
nence to  the  offspring  it  may  be  regarded  as  one  of  the  most  important  con- 
ditions, almost  an  indispensable  condition,  to  eminence. 

But  in  marriage  choice  on  the  ground  of  health  and  energy  is  but  in- 
frequently made,  and  if  in  a  family  the  fortunate  concurrence  of  such  individ- 
uals has  taken  place  in  one  generation  the  chances  are  that  it  will  not  be  re- 
peated in  the  next,  that  is  to  say  it  will  be  quite  an  exceptional  occurrence  if 
the  wife  of  the  successful  man  of  science  is  as  healthy  and  energetic  as  his 
mother  was,  and  if  she  is  not  the  stock  will  degenerate  in  quality  and  prob- 
ably decrease  numerically.  A  part,  then,  of  the  lessened  fertility  which 

*    For  the  quotations  in  this  paragraph  sec  English  Men  of  Science,  pp.  99-102. 


51 

Mr.  Galton  attributes  to  the  relative  deficiency  of  health  of  the  scientific 
man  himself,  is,  if  this  reasoning  be  true,  traceable  to  the  inferior 
stamina  of  the  consort  that  he  selects. 

And  this  view  is  sustained  by  a  consideration  of  the  social  tendencies  in 
which  the  rising  man  of  science  lives.  Having  won  his  fame  by  hard  work 
and  established  a  social  position  he  is,  at  about  the  age  of  thirty-five,  ready 
to  marry,  and  in  a  conspicuously  large  number  of  cases  he  selects  a  woman 
of  social  accomplishments  whose  culture  has  been  fashionable  and  who  is  the 
inheritor  of  some  wealth.  In  preference  to  the  woman  of  book  education  he 
as  yet  chooses  the  woman  of  society  education.  Many  of  the  successful 
scholars  rose  from  social  obscurity  if  not  cramping  material  cbnditions,  and 
a  social  marriage  therefore  strengthens  their  social  connection  and  adds  a 
relieving  competence  to  their  not  very  generous  salaries.  But  the  women 
whose  attainments  belong  to  the  drawing-room  have  not  led  to  li£e  that 
conduces  to  race  perpetuity,  and  it  could  therefore  be  predicted  that  their 
families  would  be  smaller  and  show  more  instances  of  sterility  than  the 
families  that  produced  their  husbands.  In  cases  of  heiresses — often  the 
single  child — whose  lathers  married  late,  after  a  wearing  industrial  struggle, 
and  who  have  themselves  led  a  society  life,  the  prospect  of  strong  and 
numerous  issue  is  minimized. 

As1  the  skepticism  concerning  intellectually  educated  women  wears 
away  ami  their  higher  education  becomes  common  it  may  be  anticipated  that 
educated  men  will  more  and  more  seek  educated  women  for  wives.  Among 
the  cultured  the  value  of  intellectual  fellowship  in  the  family  is  every  day 
more  highly  prized;  it  is  perceived  ever  more  clearly  that  the  most  perfect 
mutual  enjoyments  and  benefits  require  that  husband  and  wife  be  upon  the 
sain-  level,  that  each  have  his  own  well-assured  intellectual  and  moral  as 
well  as  material  basis,  and,  perhaps  most  of  all,  it  is  perceived  that  the  du- 
ties belonging  to  a  mother  and  guide  of  children  are  so  unlimited  and  com- 
plicated and  solemn  that  her  poise  of  soul  and  knowledge  may  be  infinite 
and  yet  not  too  sufficient.  Our  inquiry  therefore  opens  the  question  what 
effect  these  unions  of  the  educated,  if  they  become  prevalent,  will  have  on 
tin-  race  of  educated  persons. 

An  Knglish  writer 'has  maintained  that  'the  health  of  mankind,  contin- 
uallv  vitiated  bv  selfish  indulgences  and  sensualism  in  men,  is  renewed  in 
each  generation  of  children,  because  they  derive  half  their  nature  from  their 


52 

comparatively  non-vitiated  mothers,  and  that  hence  it  was  justly  said  by 
Bronson  Alcott :  "Women  and  children  are  perpetual  messiahs. " 
This  statement  would  have  to  be  corrected  by  balancing  against  the  vices  of 
man  some  essentially  feminine  indulgences,  which  though  not  yet  morally 
reprobated  are  perhaps  as  inimical  to  individual  health  and  race  toughness 
as  the  more  characteristic  masculine  excesses.  Scientists  sometimes  question 
if  lacing  the  body  is  not  as  deadly  a  custom  as  the  masculine  habit  of  drink. 
It  acts  upon  the  offspring  by  enfeebling  the  mother  through  the  years  pre- 
vious to  her  maternity,  then  through  the  non-natural  and  imperfect  intra- 
uterine  life  of  the  child,  and  later  in  all  its  infancy  and  youth  through  the 
teasing  ways  and  incompetence  that  anaemia  and  lassitude  and  fragile  nerves 
in  the  mother  necessitate.  Furthermore  there  is  the  consuming  social  regi- 
men which  draws  copiously  upon  the  vital  capital  of  women.  A  corres- 
pondent of  Mr.  Galton's  who  "is  singularly  well  qualified  to  form  a  just 
opinion  on  the  matter  to  which  he  so  forcibly  calls  attention,  "  says,  "  The 
principal  hindrance  to  inquiry  and  all  other  intellectual  progress,  in  the 
people  of  whom  I  see  much,  is  the  elaborate  machinery  for  wasting  time 
which  has  been  invented  and  recommended  under  the  name  of  *  social  du- 
ties. '  Considering  the  mental  and  material  capital  of  which  the  richer 
classes  have  the  disposal,  I  believe  that  much  more  than  half  the  progres- 
sive force  of  the  nation  runs  to  waste  from  this  cause.  "  f  If  the  attempt 
is  made  by  men  to  combine  this  elaborate  social  life  with  a  serious  pursuit, 
either  the  serious  pursuit  or  the  men  will  come  off  poorly.  A  woman  will 
suffer  more.  But  social  opinion  will  condone  the  negligence  of  social  duties 
in  men — of  whom  a  collateral  occupation  is  comprehensible — where  it  will 
not  yet  pardon  their  neglect  by  women.  It  is  claimed  by  the  friends  of 
pressure  in  female  education  that  a  noteworthy  fraction  of  the  women  who 
lose  health  in  college  lose  it  from  trying  to  combine  social  gayety  with  study. 
Experience  shows  that  the  advanced  education  of  women  makes  strongly 
against  their  adherence  to  these  deteriorating  customs,  but  of  course  great 
damage  to  health  must  be  done  before  the  ideals  of  society  change  or  studi- 
ous women  as  a  class  learn  to  treat  them  with  self-conserving  independence. 
The  present  difficulty  is  that  the  families  of  many  intellectually  aspiring 
women  will  not  let  them  ignore  society  traditions,  and  thus  force  upon  them 


*     Westminister  Review,  July  1888,  art.  "Mental  Deterioration  " 
t     Evt/ltsh  Men  of  Science,  p    228. 


53 

two  lives,  either  of  which  in  the  eagerness  that  distinguishes  our  day  would 
be  absorbing  enough. 

The  more  serious  side  is  that  if  studious  men  with  every  inherited  ad- 
vantage of  trained  brain  texture  decline  from  the  vigor  of  their 
fore-fathers  in  consequence  of  the  rigors  of  scientific  life,  intellectual  women 
will  be  sure  to  decline  as  much  from  the  physical  plane  of  their  parents. 
There  is  all  moderation  in  this  deduction.  It  does  not  require  us  to  accept 
the  postulates  of  Mr.  Grant  Allen  and  Mrs.  Lynn  Linton  or  Dr.  Clarke 
that  women  are  more  liable  than  men  to  suffer  from  intemperate  exertion, 
because  they  lack  the  guards  that  centuries  have  framed  about  male  educa- 
tion, because  women  have  not  been  trained  to  endure  intense  mental  life, 
and  because  of  the  enormous  requisitions  upon  their  vitality  of  a  purely 
physical  nature  during  the  years  when  the  reproductive  organs  are  com- 
ing to  maturity  * — almost  self-evident  though  these  opinions  are — but  it  is 
an  argument  from  sober  analogy,  showing  that  if  what  is  considered  mod- 
erate and  reasonable  use  of  the  brain  in  men  seems  to  injure  them,  the 
same  degree  of  moderation  and  reasonableness  will  assuredly  injure  women. 
Assuming  that  these  educated  classes  will  continually  intermarry  more,  the 
effects  that  Mr.  Galton  has  observed  in  the  diminishing  families  of  scientific 
men,  will,  if  they  arise  from  the  cause  that  he  conjectures,  be  doubled  and 
the  rate  of  decrease  and  deterioration  of  the  offspring  will  be  twice  as  great 
as  he  has  found  it.  The  farther  inference  is  that  there  will  be  an  increase 
of  the  already  strikingly  large  number  of  sterile  marriages  among  the  edu- 
cated. 


*  'A  girl  is  something  more  than  an  individual;  she  is  the  potential  mother  of  a  race;  and  the 
last  is  greater  and  more  important  than  the  first.  Let  her  learn  by  all  means.  Let  her  store  her 
mind  and  add  to  her  knowledge,  but  always  with  quietness  and  self-control— always  under  restric- 
tions bounded  by  her  sex  and  its  future  possible  function  Or,  if  she  disregards  these  restrictions, 
and  goes  in  for  competitive  examinations,  with  their  exhausting  strain  and  feverish  excitement— if 
she  takes  up  a  profession  where  she  will  have  to  compete  wi«h  men  and  suffer  all  the  pain  and  anx- 
iety of  the  unequal  struggle— let  her  then  dedicate  herself  from  the  beginning  as  the  vestal  of  knowl- 
edge, and  forego  the  exercise  of  that  function  the  perfec'ion  of  which  her  own  self-Improvement  has 
destroyed.  We  cannot  combfne  opposites  nor  reconcile  conflicting  conditions.  If  the  mental  strain 
consequent  on  this  higher  education  does  waste  the  physical  energies,  and  if  the  gain  of  the  individ- 
ual is  Ions  to  the  race,  then  must  that  gain  be  sacrificed  or  isolated."  Mrs.  E.  Lynn  Linton:— ''The 
Higher  Education  of  Women,"  Fortnightly  Review*  vol.  46. 


54 

n. 

THE    INCREASE  OF    POWER. 

The  not  altogether  welcome  deductions  of  the  preceding  section  indicate 
that  higher  education  and  the  higher  scientific  activity  are  not  themselves 
scientifically  conducted.  The  aim  of  education  and  science  is  the  increase 
of  human  power.  Power  should  first  appear  in  the  scientist  and  educator. 
But  science  and  educatio^n  diminish  the  power  of  the  scientist  and  educator, 
the  guage  of  diminution  being  their  less  powerful  offspring.  After  adopting 
the  science  and  education  that  were  to  increase  our  power,  and  finding  our 
power  diminished,  we  come  to  our  senses  and  urgently  beg  for  information 
whence  and  to  whom  will  come  the  increase  of  power.  By  diligently  press- 
ing the  question  we  learn  that  it  was  not  particularly  planned  to  have  it 
arise  in  us,  as  we  are  only  individuals  and  not  of  more  consequence  than 
mere  individuals  ever  are,  but  in  the  race,  and  not  just  now  but  sometime. 
The  revelation  bewilders  us.  We  had  been  extravagantly  solicited  to  adopt 
education  and  science  on  the  promise  of  power,  and  unfalteringly  assured  of 
an  income  of  power  to  ourselves, — until  we  were  too  well  committed  to  turn 
back,  and  found  our  power  already  diminished,  whereon  we  were  taken  into 
the  confidence  of  those  whose  power  had  been  decreased  before  us  and  the 
mystery  was  revealed  to  us  that  we  and  our  power  are  fleeting  and  unim- 
portant and  the  race  power  of  the  future  is  what  everybody  has  his  mind  on. 
We  are  not  so  generous  ourselves,  and  we  know  that  none  of  the  rest  of 
these  diminished  persons  are  so  generous.  We  know  that  where  they  are 
not  blind  they  are  ravaged  by  a  disappointment  they  are  trying  to  conceal 
from  themselves,  that  they  were  baited  by  the  solemn  promise  of  education 
and  science  to  increase  their  power,  and  when  they  found  their  powers 
dwindling  under  these  incompetent  preceptors,  they  were  loath  to  acknowl- 
edge it  and  dissembled  and  said  to  everybody,  We  are  growing  large  and 
strong,  come  with  us  and  grow  likewise  large  and  strong ; — and  with  these 
false  words  ever  on  their  lips  many  of  them  came  to  believe  in  their  own 
deception. 

It  is  perfectly  evident  that  education  and  science  which  do  not  increase 
the  power  of  the  educated  and  scientific  persons,  and  that  leave  powerless 


55 

offspring,  are  but  the  first  rude  attempts  at  true  education  and  true  science. 
I  have  respect  for  a  nineteenth  century  scientist  who  turns  his  blood  into 
water  to  arrive  at  a  discovery  ahead  of  everybody  else.  I  also  have  respect 
for  the  sixth  century  knights,  each  one  of  whom  wanted  to  spill  his  blood 
on  the  ground  if  he  could  not  spill  that  of  his  enemies,  "big  boobies, " 
Mark  Twain  discourteously  calls  them,  sticking  to  fighting  and  taking  pride  in 
it  clear  up  into  full  age  and  beyond,  like  a  couple  of  boys,  strangers,  meet- 
ing by  chance,  and  saying  simultaneously,  "  I  can  lick  you,  "  and  going  at 
it  on  the  spot — an  operation  which  one  had  always  imagined  belonged  to 
children  only  and  was  a  mark  and  sign  of  childhood. '  *  The  ambition  for 
getting  ahead  of  adversaries  in  science  or  spilling  the  blood  of  posterity  in 
the  unselfish  endeavor,  is  begin ning  already  to  awaken  in  correcter  heads 
antequariao  interest,  and  some  Mark  Twain  of  the  twenty-fifth  century  will 
turn  his  eye  back  to  our  quarter  of  time  and  call  these  naive  contestants  for 
silly  glory  big  children,  not  much  better  than  those  sixth  century  ones. 
Tims  Kind-son's  caution  to  reformers  may  be  turned  to  gourmands  of  edu- 
cation and  the  unbalanced,  bellicose  children  of  science:  "It  is  of  little 
mo  HUM  it  that  «>n<  or  two,  or  twenty  errors  of  our  social  system  be  corrected, 
hut  of  much  that  the  man  be  in  his  senses.  " 

It  is  a  fair  demand  that  anyone  who  has  an  important  work  to  do  for 
the  human  race  should  not  himself  neglect  to  remain  human,  to  be  in  his 
senses.  Perhaps  he  had  better  not  give  us  his  gift  if  he  cannot  give  it  in 
the  right  way  and  be  fit  to  look  upon  and  love.  There  are  people  who  are 
slaves  to  the  senses  and  thorn  we  call  .sensualists;  there  are  others,  the  sci- 
entists, who  are  in  servile  bondage  to  thinking, — they  are  sensualists  df 
thought,  epicures  at  the  intellectual  table,  inebriates  at  the  feast.  They 
despise  the  sensualist  of  the  body  but  they  are  his  brothers,  not  less  licen- 
tious, not  less  debauched.  License  is  immoderation  and  the  thralls  of  ap- 
pctite  and  thought  are  alike.  Both  are  rather  victims  of  passion  than  mas- 
ter.- of  it.  The  unreasonable  enjoyment  of  the  senses  is  much  vilified  and 
the  excessive  gratification  of  mental  lust  highly  honored,  but  there  is  not  so 
much  choice.  The  products  are  libertines,  one  physical  one  intellectual. 

I  took  lectures  of  a  public  teacher  once,  who  had  knowledge  in  abun- 
dance, ami  whom  with  all  his  knowledge  I  wish  I  had  never  seen.  If  my 
scientific  teacher  has  lost  his  senses  in  becoming  a  scientist,  I  will  omit  his 

*     .1    }'<i/i/,'<,  in   1\  in (i  Arthur'*  Co '//•/.  cli.  in. 


56 

science  from  my  accomplishments  if  it  is  necessary  for  me  to  have  it  of  him. 
If  scientific  and  educated  persons  are  trying  to  increase  the  power  of  man- 
kind I  want  them  to  show  that  their  own  power  is  increased  before  I  will 
either  believe  in  them  or  venture  to  let  them  apply  their  theories  to  me. 
I  do  not  believe  a  man  can  do  anything  for  me  who  cannot  do  anything  for 
himself,  and  if  I  see  that  he  has  done  for  himself  badly  and  calls  it  good 
and  wishes  to  do  the  same  kind  of  good  to  me,  I  pray  I  may  be  sensible 
enough  not  to  walk  into  his  web.  There  would  not  be  many  yawning  un- 
der the  professors  if  they  looked  at  it  as  I  do.  They  would  be  saying  to  the 
professors,  "My  good  fellows,  where  is  the  color  you  ought  to  have  in  your 
cheeks?  Why  are  your  legs  so  small?  Do  you  want  to  make  me  like 
that?  Well,  I  do  not  care  to  be  like  that.  Why  can  you  not  go  out  into  the 
landscape  and  live  and  live  for  days  and  weeks  as  children  and  sound  men 
live,  happy  without  a  book  to  mar  the  scenery  or  a  careful  thought?  You 
have  been  '  increasing  your  power, '  and  that  is  why,  until  you  are  now  so 
powerful  that  it  is  a  burden  even  to  drag  yourselves  out  of  your  studies  to 
stimulate  a  miserable  digestion  with  a  miserable  walk.  " 

To  win  people  to  the  hypothesis  that  education  and  science  increase 
power  the  best  persuasion  will  be  beautiful  and  symmetrical  followers  of 
these  callings,  brimming  with  the  power  they  eulogize.  For  if  they  have  so 
little  reverence  for  power  as  to  deface  and  assail  it  in  their  own  persons 
what  evidence  have  we  that  they  sincerely  desire  it  for  other  people  in  the 
future ;  and  if  they  are  so  mistaken  in  the  nature  of  power  as  to  think  they 
are  acquiring  it  for  themselves  while  they  are  continually  consuming  it, 
what  faith  have  we  that  their  ability  to  capture  power  for  the  race  will  ex- 
ceed their  ability  to  obtain  it  for  themselves?  And  so  we  can  only  half 
rely  on  the  educators  and  scientists,  and  if  we  have  anything  to  do  with 
them  we  must  keep  a  narrow  scrutiny  right  and  left  or  they  will  lead  us 
where  we  would  not  for  our  lives  go. 

And  it  appears  when  we  come  to  know  them  yet  more  intimately  that 
we  were  quite  right  in  restraining  our  confidence,  for  when  the  smoke  of 
their  devotion  to  science  clears  off  we  are  apprised  that  their  motive  is  not 
the  pure  hope  to  increase  human  power  but  has  a  great  leaden  alloy  of  am- 
bition for  fame  and  advancement  for  themselves.  To  couple  one's  name 
with  a  discovery  is  a  scientist's  aspiration,  as  rich  men  buy  their  perpetuity 
with  philanthrophic  buildings.  There  are  scientists  who  will  not  patent 


57 

their  discoveries,  having  a  scorn  for  anything  sordid  or  commercial,  and 
thereby  standing  high  above  inventors  like  Edison,  Bell  and  Brush  who 
will  make  the  world  pay  long  and  dear  for  any  good  thing  they  do  ;  but  if 
these  scientists  itch  for  glory  and  degrees  and  election  to  honorable  scientific 
bodies — matters  of  vanity  and  moral  adolescence — they  must  not  cast  stones 
at  the  patent-seekers,  who  want  their  public  pay  in  different  coin.  The 
commercial  discoverer  is  superior  on  one  account  to  his  co-laboring  scientist, 
for  he  takes  his  ground  openly  on  the  everlasting  proposition,  'I  have  a 
right  to  enjoy  myself  in  the  world, '  tho  his  practice  leads  him  away 
from  the  goal. 

Ambition  for  fame  in  science  is  not  the  lowest  motive  but  it  gives  a 
clue  to  the  value  of  the  scientists'  announcement  of  their  vocation  to  in- 
(•ivuse  power,  as  well  as  a  new  opinion  of  their  enthusiasm  for  the  cause  of 
j)  >A  T  in  the  later  human  race.  For  there  is  hardly  anything  that  will  make 
men  so  11  •irlectful  of  their  own  symmetry  and  durability  and  power  as  this 
ambition  for  some  personal  distinction.  Half  the  years  of  their  lives  will 
they  willingly  give  for  a  little  eminence.  "The  silliest  animal  of  all  ani- 
mals is  without  question  man,  "  says  the  writer  of  a  fable.  "  Man  thinks 
ever  of  the  future,  and  seldom  enjoys  the  present.  His  whole  life  long 
doth  he  labor  and  worry,  instead  of  employing  the  present  moment,  and  be- 
ing of  good  cheer  and  ever  in  buoyant  spirits."  That  secret  of  employing 
the  present  moment  and  being  of  good  cheer  man  has  never  yet  learned  nor 
faithfully  tried  to  learn.  "There  will  always  be  something  worth  living 
for  while  there  are  shimmery  afternoons."  After  life  has  been  tried  among 
the  thorny  paths  of  some  absorbing  wish  and  in  the  failure  or  achievement 
1ms  turned  out  vain  and  bitter,  we  discover  that  there  are  shimmery  after- 
noons, and  that  life  in  their  tender  glory  'is  sweet,  sweet,  sweet.'  Were 
there  not  shimmery  afternoons  while  we  toiled  with  bleeding  feet  and  heart 
after  the  cheating  desire?  '  Ah  !  life  is  delicious  ;  to  sit  there,  gloating  in 
the  sunlight,  was  perfect.  It  was  worth  having  been  a  little  child,  and 
having  cried  and  prayed,  so  one  might  sit  there;'  *  worth  alse  spending 
years  ainoii.Li  the  sunless  follies  of  erring  aspiration,  so  one  might  finally 
learn  that  the  riches  of  God  lie  about  us  from  our  infancy  on  the  unlabori- 
ous  earth,  we  wasting  the  priceless  irredeemable  days  gazing  wistfully  and 

*     Thr  Sf />r>/ of  n a  Afi'K'dn  /•>//•///. 


58 

despairingly  on  the  dumb  sky.  "  Absolute  happiness  flees  when  we  enter 
our  'teens,"  if  amid  the  cries  and  prayers  of  childhood  it  ever  alighted  even 
a  moment  on  the  youngest.  It  is  man's  own  doing.  Happiness  is  possible 
to  him,  he  is  himself  the  magician  whose  will  it  must  obey. 

It  is  not  forever  the  destiny  of  man  to  find  the  wine  of  life  and  obtain 
the  holy  grail  of  peace  at  the  eleventh  hour  when  the  supple  frame  has  stiff- 
ened with  bootless  quests.  Even  at  the  eleventh  hour  the  shimmery  after- 
noons breathe  of  Elysium,  and  old  men,  just  born  at  last,  exclaim,  life  is 
sweet,  sweet,  sweet,  and  fain  would  live  on  so  always.  It  would  be  rending 
the  veil  of  heaven  and  flooding  the  earth  with  paradise  did  those 
old  warriors  impart  the  secret  of  their  life-long  failure,  for  the  young  to 
enter  in  their  lusty  prime  the  real  life.  Joyously  would  they  enter  if  truly 
informed  of  the  way.  We  disdain  the  possibility  and  say  as  of  old  each 
must  learn  for  himself  amid  sorrow  and  the  bitterness  of  failure,  for  it  is 
the  law  of  life.  But  the  only  impossible  thing  is  prevailing  upon  the  seers 
of  the  vision  to  impart  it  and  bring  up  children  to  believe  in  it  and  live  the 
new  life.  This  is  indeed  hard,  for  these  older  people  who  have  made  dis- 
coveries and  abandoned  wasting  prejudices  for  themselves  have  not  the 
courage  or  faith  or  energy  to  liberate  others,  being  worn  out  by  their  long 
servitude  to  false  thinking  and  living.  So  the  young  must  repeat  their 
failures  and  perchance  when  too  late  remake  their  discoveries,  and  yearn 
and  die  sorrowful. 

But  the  remedial  hour  is  approaching.  The  young  are  to  learn  that 
the  ideals  of  life  set  before  them  in  the  family,  in  society,  by  the  schools, 
by  the  churches  and  by  the  laws  are  moss-grown  ruins,  walling  them  in 
from  the  raidiant  glories  of  existence,  ideals  of  an  immature  race,  to  be  shed 
and  sloughed  off  in  the  time  of  manhood  and  self -understanding.  The  young 
are  to  obtain  success  and  happiness  by  abandoning  the  accepted  standards 
of  life  and  announcing  their  allegiance  to  the  inner  aspirations  that  will  de- 
molish one  by  one  the  sacred  idolatries  of  school,  state,  church  and  fireside. 
There  is  but  one  source  of  life,  all  the  great  have  reached  it  and  to  reach  it 
is  to  become  great,  it  is  the  internal  self.  Its  promptings  are  above  rules 
and  teachings  and  habits,  and  it  will  break  these  hourly  and  without  cere- 
mony; it  scans  bibles  inquiringly  and  asks,  can  these  reverend  commandments 
reconcile  themselves  with  the  present  law  of  my  consciousness?  Who  is  this 
Moses  or  Jesus  who  lays  down  laws  for  my  conduct?  They  and  all  the 


59  / 

caravan  that  have  lived  and  gone  are  in  me,  the  divine  all-including  self, 
and  something  more  is  in  me  than  they  all.  There  are  moral  problems  born 
of  my  constitution  that  no  one  who  ever  lived  and  not  the  totality  of  those 
that  have  lived  ever  had  or  conceived,  and  only  the  forces  and  perceptions 
of  my  constitution  can  see  and  solve  these  problems  that  are  constitutionally 
my  own. 

Thus  the  old  is  to  pass  away,  the  institutions  that  have  frozen  and  for- 
malized men,  marriage  that  keeps  spirits  apart,  the  family  that  is  a  nucleus 
and  excuse  for  selfishness,  that  vaunts  its  antique  encroachments  upon  the 
individual  and  its  selfishness  as  virtues,  the  laws  which  hold  the  many  in 
cruel  subjugation,  the  fabulous  fraud  that  has  come  to  be  called  religion, 
and  the  great  nursery  of  dead  and  septic  ideals  and  ambitions,  the  schools. 
All  these  are  to  pass  away  or  be  born  anew  in  forms  that  the  spirit  of  life 
will  draft  and  animate. 

I  arraign  the  educators  as  the  parties  most  responsible  for  the  continu- 
ance of  society  in  a  grade  of  culture  that  assigns  to  every  voyager  to  the 
continent  of  life  an  uuseaworthy  ship,  and  a  map  of  the  waters  and  stars 
that  will  turn  him  sheer  away  from  his  course  and  wreck  him,  if  the  hulk  so 
long  survives,  on  barren  rocks  to  die.  Why,  tell  me,  are  these  educators 
themselves  subservient  to  mendacious  principles  of  life,  and  why,  knowing 
them  false  and  sterile,  do  they  sow  these  principles  year  after  year  in  minds 
that  will  reap  from  them  a  whirlwind  of  sorrow  and  death  ?  I  will  not  at- 
tempt to  answer  these  prodigious  questions  further  than  to  say  that  these 
sterile  educators  were  produced  by  the  same  sterilizing  education  and  have 
seemingly  missed  the  salient  qualities  that  enshrine  freedom  and  truth  and 
hand  them  on, 

III. 

HOW  TO  MAKE  THE    SCHOOLS    SERVE  US. 

Strange  that  we  should  be  called  to  consider  the  problem  of  making 
the  schools  serve  us!  But  they  are  not  serving  us  now,  they  are  serving 
their  own  ends,  the  ends  of  professional  educators.  They  have  formed  a 
theory  that  doing  certain  things  is  education;  if  anyone  does  these  things, 
tho  he  remain  a  wooden  and  impeding  creature,  he  is  educated;  if  he  omits 


60 

to  do  them,  tho  he  finds  in  some  private  unofficial  way  the  ingress  to  genius 
and  power,  he  is  uneducated.  An  educated  man  must  observe  regular- 
ity ;  he  must  wear  a  tag,  B.  A.,  M.  A.,  Ph.  D.  These  are  a  great  acces- 
sion to  his  dignity  and  prospects.  If  a  company  of  scholars  find  in  their 
midst  a  powerful  mind  that  has  mounted  some 'other  way  than  the  decent 
and  uniform  road  of  examinations,  they  are  ashamed  of  his  presence  until 
they  have  clothed  him  in  the  respectable  seeming  of  a  degree.  Degrees 
have  become  a  fetish,  and  the  name  of  education  is  obscuring  the  substance. 
We  are  entering  upon  a  slavery  to  institutional  education  that  must  cause 
lively  alarm  to  those  who  consider  education  the  untrammeled  expansion  of 
individual  spirits. 

The  student  is  not  free  in  spirit.  Something  depends  upon  how  he 
comports  himself  with  the  professor.  His  standing  and  degree  depend  upon 
it.  The  professor  is  the  examining  power.  Only  so  much  influence  as  by 
their  character  and  knowledge  they  naturally  exert  should  these  prof ezw  s 
have ;  the  authority  to  examine  and  disgrace  gives  them  an  adventitious 
and  baleful  influence.  The  student  cannot  be  to  his  instructor  us  equal 
man  to  man  ;  he  must  trim  to  the  prejudices  and  foiables  of  a  superior  who 
carries  the  signet  of  promotion.  He  grows  by  permission.  The  age  or 
mental  limitations  of  a  professor  may  preclude'  him  comprehension  of  the 
thought  that  is  rising  on  the  next  generation  : — "  Sir,  "  says  his  spirit  to 
the  intuition  of  his  pupil,  "  you  cannot  imbibe  this  last  heresy  and  bask  in 
my  favor.  "  While  this  intrinsic  patronage  seems  necessary  to  the  student, 
he  lives  in  leading  strings. 

The  examining  and  degree  giving  powers  of  our  institutions  are  em- 
ployed to  force  the  students  through  a  regular  course.  There  is  no  hope  of 
high  dynamic  attainments  while  any  element  of  compulsion  remains  in  ed- 
ucation. Your  ordinary  honor  man  is  usually  a  man  of  mechanical  acquisi- 
tions, a  good  calculator  of  educational  usury.  He  will  probably  run 
through  life  automatically  and  amass  a  fortune  of  profitable  facts  and  prin- 
ciples. He  may  become  a  great  workman  with  these  tools,  but  we  shall 
never  call  him  an  artist.  We  shall  never  admit  that  he  was  educated,  for 
education  is  not  a  mechanical  accomplishment.  Education  grows,  it  is  not 
made.  Each  mind  has  a  law  of  growth,  and  these  are  as  many  as  are 
minds.  It  is  difficult  to  conceive  how  the  experience  of  educators  could 
ascertain  the  educational  law  for  a  mind  that  has  now  for  the  first  time  ap- 


61 

peared.  Every  mind  is  such  a  new  fact,  reducible  by  no  preceding  laws. 
The  educators  have  nevertheless  formulated  laws  and  courses  and  with  the 
assistance  of  examinations  and  degrees  they  prevail  upon  unripe  students  to 
sacrifice  the  dawning  law  of  their  growth  to  an  articifial  law  pieced  to- 
gether from  the  experiences  of  dissimilar  minds.  The  most  original  minds 
have  either  rebelled  against  the  routinary  education  set  for  them  or  have 
afterwards  deplored  the  hours  dissipated  in  its  painful  task-work.  Over  the 
entrance  of  every  school  and  college  should  be  inscribed  the  testimony  of 
Montainiriie  who  said  of  his  own  mind,  "I  do  really  believe  it  had  been  to- 
tally impossible  to  have  made  it  to  submit  by  violence  and  force."  Mon- 
taigne went  to  college,  protected  as  far  as  could  be  by  his  father  who  pro- 
vided him  the  most  able  tutors  and  reserved  several  particular  rules  con- 
trary to  the  college  practice ;  "but  so  it  was  that,  with  all  these  precau- 
tions, it  was  a  College  still."  Here  he  first  took  pleasure  in  reading  the 
fables  of  Ovid's  Metamorphoses,  which  made  him  think  the  less  of  the 
other  lessons  prescribed  him  ;  "  and  here  it  was  infinitely  to  my  advantage 
to  have  to  do  with  an  understanding  tutor,  who  was  wise  enough  to  connive 
at  this  and  other  truantries  of  the  same  nature;  for  by  this  means  I  ran 
through  VirLfil's  JEneids,  and  then  Terence,  and  then  Plautus,  and  some 
Italian  comedies,  allured  by  the  pleasure  of  the  subject  ;  whereas  had  he 
been  so  foolish  as  to  have  taken  me  off  this  diversion,  I  do  really  believe  I 
had  brought  nothing  away  from  the  College  but  a  hatred  of  books,  as  al- 
most all  our  young  gentlemen  do."  It  would  trouble  us  now  to  find  stu- 
dents pursuing  work  allured  by  the  pleasure  of  the  subject,  altho  education 
is  this  alone.  If  it  were  not  for  the  tabulated,  appointed  work  leading  to 
the  glories  of  a  degree  there  would  be  time  for  the  allurements  of  education. 
The  schools  give  degrees  but  they  do  not  educate.  Degrees  are  bribes  to 
exertion.  The  schools  should  allure  to  effort  by  the  necromancy  of  pleas- 
ure. That  is  difficult,  and  it  is  very  easy  to  offer  a  degree.  Outwardly 
examinations  and  degrees  have  all  the  show  and  circumstance  of  an  educa- 
tion. I  have  somewhere  read  that  <fca  professor  at  Berlin,  where  Bismarck 
finished  his  education,  once  said  :  'He  did  me  the  honor  to  place  his  name 
on  my  class  roll,  but  I  never  saw  him  in  the  lecture  room.'  Yet  the  fu- 
ture chanc.'llor  passed  his  state  examination  with  credit,  having  crowded  the 
work  of  six  semesters  into  one." 


62 

Let  us  get  freedom  from  the  educational  establishment  any  way  we  can. 
The  law  of  growth  for  each  total  personality  is  our  pursuit  and  no  tutor  or 
faculty  knows  it.  Give  these  professors  and  faculties  much  liberty  and 
they  will  kill  personality.  The  part  to  be  performed  by  them  is  the  prepar- 
ation of  food  invitingly  and  digestibly,  having  always  ready  an  abundance 
of  nutriment  for  the  intellectual  appetite,  but  resisting  the  temptation  to 
cram  the  contents  of  any  scientific  dish  down  their  throats.  Who  but 
pedants  remember  or  care  for  what  was  stuffed  into  them? 

Is  there  any  way  to  avoid  these  institutional  evils?  Yes,  by  shunning 
the  declivity  of  regular  courses  and  treating  the  deceptive  blandishments  of 
degrees  with  scorn.  Must  I  have  a  degree  to  hold  up  my  head  in  the  pres- 
ence of  professional  scholars?  They  must  be  children  and  I  will  find  older 
and  better  companions. 

It  has  been  discovered  that  examinations  wear  upon  the  emotions ;  and 
yet  I  should  sooner  expect  to  see  professional  educators  abolish  the  emotions 
than  abolish  examinations.  Examinations  postpone  growth.  Cramming  is 
not  growth  altho  Prof  essor  W.  T.  Harris  assures  us  it  helped  him.  Knowledge 
packed  up  to  recite  is  very  differently  grasped  from  that  grappled  with  to 
impart  to  learners  or  to  use  as  an  expert.  The  accretions  gathered  for  ex- 
aminations stay  a  little  while  and  melt  away,  leaving  generally  a  poorer 
mind.  Cramming  is  a  dropsical  acctimmulation,  being  a  temporary  process 
of  high  feeding,  as  fowls  are  stuffed  and  fattened  for  the  market.  The 
tension  of  intellect  and  emotions  engendered  by  severe  examinations  in- 
duces a  depression  to  be  recovered  from  at  great  loss  of  time.  One  whose 
mind  is  elevated  above  the  fleeting  seductions  of  a  degree  is  likewise  re- 
deemed from  servitude  to  examinations. 

Competence  for  responsible  positions  is  naively  settled  by  the  candidate's 
ability  to  win  a  degree.  Quality  of  thinking  is  unexaminable  and  the  poor- 
est thinker  may  glide  through  brilliantly.  Examinations  and  degrees  are 
prolific  breeders  of  haste.  Education  does  not  count  the  years  and  does  not 
care  to  have  celebrity  clapped  onto  it  '-by  a  learned  body  at  the  customary 
age.  Spurious  education — that  is  our  institutional  education — does  not  feel 
that  anything  is  being  done  unless  this  clapping  goes  on  semi-annually. 
Students  obtaining  education  are  compelled  by  the  institutional  methods  to 
be  always  fretting  about  results.  It  is  their  business  to  have  no  thought 
of  results  but  to  be  free  from  care,  doing  the  work  of  the  moment  with  a 


63 

light  heart   and  love  for  it.     Examinations  pump  the  food  out  of  the  sto- 
mach hourly  to  see  how  it  is  digesting.    Says  Professor  William  James  with 
exceeding  wisdom,     "  We  become  saints  in  the  moral,  and  authorities  and 
experts  in  the  practical  and  scientific  spheres,  by  so  many  separate  acts  and 
hours  of  work.     Let  no  youth  have  any   anxiety   about  the   upshot  of  his 
education,   whatever  the  line  of  it  may  be.     If   he  keeps  faithfully  busy 
each  hour  of  the  working  day,  he  may  safely  leave  the  final  result  to  itself. 
He  can  with  perfect  certainty   count  on   waking  up  some  fine  morning,  to 
find  himself  one  of  the  competent  ones  of  his  generation,  in   whatever  pur- 
suit he  may  have  singled  out.     Silently,  between  all  the  details  of  his  busi- 
ness, the  power  of  judging  in  all  that  class  of  matter  will  have  built  itself 
up  within   him  as  a  possession  that  will  never  pass  away.     Young  people 
should  know  this  truth  in  advance.     The  ignorance  of  it  has  probably  en- 
gendered more  discouragement  and  faint-heartedness  in  youths  embarking 
on  arduous  careers  than  all  other  causes  put  together.  "  *     Has  this  dis- 
covery just  been   made  by  the   professors  themselves?     Is  Professor  James 
the  only  one  who  has  made  it?     Is  every  student  informed  of   this    mighty 
educational  fact  when  he  enters  Harvard  where  Professor  James  is,  that  he 
may  be  preserved  from   the   baseless   "  discouragement  and  faint-hearted- 
ness"  that  afflict  many  sensitive  students  all  their  course?     No,  I  fear  not. 
The   whole  fabric  of  Harvard    and  every  existing  school  would  have  to  be 
changed  from  the  ground   up  if  this  canon  of  education   were  adopted.     It 
would  require  the  development  of  a  new  class  of  educators,   and  the  educa- 
cators,  we  have  cloak  their  incapacity  for  the  higher  work  by  decrying  it. 
It  is  a  simple  process  to  examine  a  man,  to  hear  him   recite,  to  get  a  thesis 
of  him.     Our  educators  have  been  developed  to  perform   these  duties.     An 
intellectual   automaton  could  perform  them.     So  much  more  is   required  of 
the  educator  that  it  will  be  a  generation  or  two  before  he   can  be  produced. 
His  office  is  to  ingrain  the  student  .with  such  laws  of  human  growth  as  this 
Professor  James   has  published;  to   exorcise  the  superstitious   practices  that 
would  now  make  it  entirely  impossible  for  any  one  to  study  in  an  institution 
and  obey  laws  of  healthy  and  natural  development;  and  to  touch  the  minds 
of  his  younger  associates  in  the  quest  for   knowledge  and   wisdom  (the  stu- 
dents. I  mean)  with   such  a  fury  of  interest   that  recitations,    examinations, 


64 

bribes  and  rewards,  educational  husks,  the  very  substance  of  the  educational 
manikin  now,  might  be  dispensed  with. 

I  hear  it  said  this  is  impossible,  most  youths  must  be  forced  to  study. 
Quite  true — to  study  for  our  present  system.  The  natural  instinct  of  their 
uncorrupted  natures  rebels  against  the  sham  they  easily  penetrate.  It  is  a 
matter  of  self-preservation  not  to  fall  into  the  educational  canal.  Speaking 
broadly  the  less  they  shine  as  students  the  better  for  them,  and  the  stronger 
men  will  they  be.  In  an  order  of  education  not  spurious  they  would  be  as 
prodigal  of  intellectual  energy  to  acquire  knowledge  as  all  young  people  are 
of  physical  energy  in  their  games.  "A  child  naturally  loves  to  deal  with 
wholes,  and,  if  its  food  is  wholesome,  its  mental  appetite  is  vast  and  its  di- 
gestion marvelous.  "  This  is  the  observation  of  our  best  educator,  Presi- 
dent Stanley  Hall.  The  mental  appetite  does  not  fail  any  more  than  the 
physical  appetite  fails  unless  disease  supervenes.  Disease  supervenes  when 
the  laws  of  the  system  are  broken,  and  this  is  why  there  are  more  haters 
than  lovers  of  education.  If  the  physical  and  mental  systems  are  kept  in 
health  the  mental  appetite  will  not  fail  and  the  eagerness  to  annex  new  ter- 
ritories of  knowledge  will  enlarge  with  the  capacity.  The  burdensome 
routine,  arch-enemy  of  power  and  life  which  turns  out  bodiless  and  soulless 
apparitions  of  men  will  come  to  an  end ;  the  days  of  education  will  be  days 
of  joy,  holidays,  cloudless. 

Institutions  will  not  yet  comprehend  this  higher  conception  of  education 
and  the  more  powerful-minded  students  must  therefore  establish  it  for  them- 
selves. Going  as  free  lances,  neither  working  for  nor  accepting  any  tin- 
seled honors,  prizes,  scholarships,  fellowships  or  degrees,  cutting  across  the 
curriculum  along  the  trail  of  interest,  jumping  the  ditches  of  examination, 
they  will  form  around  them  the  conditions  of  vast  skyward  growth  of 
intellect,  physique  and  character.  Sweeping  in  their  own  orbits  they  will 
take  professors  for  what  they  are- — moons  not  suns. 

If  degrees  are  still  to  be  given  there  is  a  right  way  to  employ  them. 
They  are  at  very  best  dangerous  toys.  Like  stays  and  bandages  they  give 
a  peripheral  support  to  an  internal  weakness.  I  find  that  degrees  are  a 
crutch  on  which  morally  lame  men  hobble  about.  Once  I  heard  such  a 
cripple  refine  about  the  etiquet  of  degrees.  Until  a  writer  is  celebrated, 
he  said,  he  must  sign  his  degree  with  his  name.  That  is  it.  Our  thoughts 


65 

must  be  endorsed  ;  the  public  would  not  know  that  they  were  good  thoughts 
without  a  title.  It  also  relieves  a  writer  of  the  necessity  of  having  good 
thoughts,  for  the  trade-mark  is  the  public  criterion  of  quality.  Perceiv- 
ing which  a  religious  newspaper,  the  New  York  Independent,  once  issued  a 
notification  that  only  writers  of  standing  should  appear  on  its  pages,  and 
since  then  many  senators  have  published  their  wisdom  there. 

A  genuine  man  is  embarassed  by  the  ridiculous  consideration  obtaining 
with  a  degree.  Have  those  few  words  and  inches  of  parchment  contributed 
a  new  essence  to  him?  To  be  through  ticketed  to  men's  good  estimation  by 
the  jugglery  of  an  document  is  a  canker  tto  his  self-respect.  On  the  other 
hand  the  throng  of  degree-takers  whose  moral  fiber  is  not  well  knit  are 
overcome  by  temptation  and  set  a  false  value  on  themselves  and  swagger 
before  the  world.  Thus  our  learned  institutions  become  nurseries  and  hos- 
pitals of  vanity.  The  old  masquerade  of  titles  and  decorations  that  sur- 
vives in  slender  senility  in  the  courts  of  Europe  and  at  which  we  smile 
indulgently,  is  hying  revived  by  us  in  the  salons  of  science  where  it  is 
repeating  its  havoc  with  solid  manliness.  Many  a  one  mocks  at  decorations 
and  titles  until  he  gains  one  himself,  observes  a  writer  who  grew  up  in  the 
land  of  these  trinkets.  The  great  law  of  human  value  is  simplicity,  for  as 
of  old  the  mightier  a  discerning  man  becomes  the  more  reluctantly  will  he 
say  to  another  "I  am  superior  to  thee,"  knowing  their  intrinsic  equality. 
A  degree  is  the  public  declaration  that  one  man  is  greater  than  others, 
which  being  necessary  to  announce  carries  the  lie  with  it.  Superiority  does 
not  sulTcr  itself  to  disparage  others  and  is  modest.  When  a  university 
graduate  punctually  employs  the  device  of  his  guild,  the  Ph.  D.,  it  is  not 
safe  to  invest  in  him,  there  is  somewhere  a  flaw. 

It  is  an  application  of  the  transcendent  cosmic  fact  :  parts  are  worth- 
less. Scholarship  without  character  is  chaff.  Our  universities  are  eleva- 
tors for  the  storage  of  chaff.  The  world  cries  out  with  pent  up  longing  for 
men  and  the  universities  give  it  Doctors  of  Philosophy.  What  can  be 
i'xp I'rtcd?  Simplicity  and  reality  dwell  at  the  top  of  the  mountain  peak 
ami  the  schools  are  just  commencing  the  climb.  Aspirants  for  simplicity 
an<l  truth  can  not  wait  to  make  the  ascent  with  this  parade-loving  Persian 
rout.  They  must  throw  off  incumbrances,  handsome  clothes,  money-bags, 
school  standards  of  excellence,  academic  advancement,  and  the  leaden  long- 
mi:  for  a  soiindiiiLr  title,  and  with  the  mountain  staff  of  independence  mount 


66 

the  cliffs  alone.     Then  the  world  will  cease  to  cry  for  men. 

Escaping  the  waxing  idolatry  of  degrees  I  have  said  there  is  a  right 
way  to  confer  them  if  we  still  playfully  desire  to  classify  and  p  raise  our- 
selves to  the  outward  eye.  Merely  the  weight  a  student  is  under  who  feels 
that  he  is  "getting  up"  his  subject  for  the  test  of  a  degree  condemns  our 
wrong  way.  These  years  have  a  manufactured  and  artificial  gloom.  He 
can  neither  be  light-hearted,  enjoy  his  work,  nor  gain  the  rightful  profit 
from  it.  He  is  straining,  his  nerves  are  being  injured,  the  professors  nag 
him  on  and  make  the  most  of  this  abnormal  state.  Without  any  reserva- 
tions I  say  let  this  absurd  farce  cease  or  close  up  the  doors  of  these  neurotic 
factories  until  the  faculties  regain  their  sanity.  What  right  has  any  one 
being  "educated,"  properly  the  most  joyous  and  fruitful  operation  of  all 
life,  to  live  in  ominous  shadow  these  otherwise  happy  years!  All  con- 
cerned in  making  him  do  so  are  criminals  against  the  most  sacred  things 
known,  happiness,  power  and  life. 

To  abolish  these  festering  scholastic  vices  let  degrees  be  given  (ever  as- 
suming that  persons  can  be  found  to  accept  them)  on  the  basis  of  the  per- 
sonal knowledge  of  the  student  by  his  teacher,  knowledge  gained  by  conver- 
sation, in  meetings  of  clubs  which  the  teacher  will  form  with  the  students, 
in  the  class  room,  and  through  the  student's  original  work.  I  said  earlier 
that  this  implied  a  new  quality  of  teachers  vastly  more  original  and  dy- 
namic and  constructive  than  those  we  develop  now.  But  I  counsel  all 
students  to  have  no  commerce  with  degrees  or  graduations  until  this  larger 
type  of  educator  is  produced. 

We  know  very  well  what  a  travesty  the  title-giving  process  is  when  seen 
from  the  inside  of  the  faculty.  It  is  seldom  that  these  weighty  persons,  the 
professors,  do  not  know  to  whom  they  will  award  the  titles  before  examina- 
tions are  approached.  The  examination  is  therefore  an  intrinsically  mean- 
ingless form.  But  it  must  serve  some  purpose  or  the  wise  educators  would 
abolish  it.  They  know  perfectly  that  three  or  four  months  of  high  press- 
ure reading  do  not  give  the  aspirant  for  a  doctorate  any  qualifications  for 
scholarly  promotion  that  he  had  not  before,  or  at  least  would  have  won  by 
quietly  pursuing  those  last  four  months  the  even  course  of  growth  that 
alone  had  given  him  real  title  to  recognition,  without  the  climax  and  catas- 
trophe of  an  examination.  If  the  professors  do  not  know  who  the  success- 
ful candidates  will  be  before  the  cram  is  begun,  they  are  ill  adapted  to  their 


67 

place.  Knowing  this,  then,  they  concur  in  perpetrating  upon  the  students 
a  conscious  fraud.  Thjey  doubtless  honestly  think  it  is  best  to  keep  up  the 
delusion,  and  believe  that  the  fabric  of  learning  would  collapse  without  it. 
Their  misconception  is  easy  to  explain  when  we  reflect  that  advanced  educa- 
tion is  a  growth  out  of  the  education  of  children,  and  that  the  unskillful 
ages  from  which  we  have  ascended  and  obtained  our  educational  practices  re- 
lied chiefly  upon  compulsion  and  penalties  to  prod  the  young  to  development. 
The  examination  then  is  the  professor's  goad  and  that  is  why  he  thinks  it  the 
most  indispensible  tool  of  his  kit.  Solomon  would  have  been  a  little  more 
guarded  about  saying  ' '  spare  the  rod  and  spoil  the  child "  if  he  had 
known  that  the  rod  would  sometime  become  an  examination  to  be  laid  on 
the  backs  of  strapping  men  and  women  by  school  teachers.  It  awakens 
mirth  just  to  think  of  Plato  or  Socrates  using  the  examination,  tho  only 
very  broad  minds  should  be  entrusted  with  this  dubious  privilege.  But 
with  us  it  is  placed  indiscriminately  in  the  hands  of  a  class  with  narrow 
tniining  and  sympathies  and  these  "  professionals"  are  seldom  brought  to 
book  for  their  misuse  of  it. 

As  institutions  are  wholly  unready  to  pass  on  from  the  use  of  the  rod 
to  the  adoption  of  mature  methods  and  reason,  the  students  who  determine 
not  to  be  children  manipulated  after  childish  principles  by  older  children  of 
interrupted  moral  growth,  being  deprived  of  the  friendly  advancement  ac- 
corded to  those  who  observe  the  adjusted  procedures  of  the  educational  ma- 
chine, will  have  to  lay  their  foundations  for  life  intelligently.  It  will  be 
doubly  advisable  for  them  to  acquire  some  unprofessional  method  of  support, 
which  will  render  them  superior  to  the  disposition  of  scholarships  and  fel- 
lowships. Advancing  deliberately,  incurring  no  debts,  dependent  on  none, 
hiving  solid  and  indestructible  foundations,  developing  not  forcing  them- 
selves, mastering  their  ground  as  they  occupy  it,  despising  educational  show 
and  charlatanry,  they  will  be  living  as  they  proceed  and  storing  up  the  ele- 
ments of  power  that  will  make  them  prodigious,  recuperative  world-forces. 
It  will  lie  in  the  power  of  a  personality  of  this  caliber  to  speak  on  all  sub- 
jects as  he  thinks,  to  be  a  character  as  well  as  a«specialist.  He  will  be  an 
individual,  uncontaminated  by  the  petty  "club  judgment"  and  provincial- 
isms of  the  university.  In  perfect  physical  preservation  and  mental  sanity, 
never  knowing  the  anxieties  and  pressures  that  have  already  made  old  men 
of  his  contemporaries,  he  will  go  out  to  the  laborg^JLt^world  with  the  in- 


68 

vincible  strength  and  spirit  of  the  heroes  of  the  golden  age,  a  new  kind  of 
man,  unwonted,  the  highest  evolution,  not  readily  comprehended  by  our  little 
imaginations,  colossal,  portending  virile  deeds,  titanic  transformations  and 
new  social  systems  and  happiness. 


The  Extension  of  Culture. 


I.      UNIVERSITY  EXTENSION.  * 

The  University  Extension  system  has  become  an  established  part  of 
British  education.  I  will  describe  its  leading  features  in  a  few  words. 
The  movement  originated  in  the  perception  that  higher  culture  is  confined 
to  too  few  people.  All  people  cannot  go  to  the  university,  the  university 
must  therefore  be  brought  to  the  people.  University  extension  consists  of  a 
series  of  lectures  on  special  subjects  given  by  specialists  in  places  accessible 
to  the  public.  The  universities  and  towns  have  co-operated  in  the  project. 
"The  university  undertakes  the  educational  organization;  the  town,  the 
funds  and  local  management :  the  whole  constituting  a  network  of  local 
branches,  working  independently,  in  association  with  the  universities  as  a 
common  center.  "  f  Two  classes  of  persons  are  reached,  those  who  merely 
attend  the  lectures,  called  the  "audiences,  "  and  a  sprinkling  of  students 
who  do  additional  work.  "For  such  audiences  and  students  the  movement 
provides  courses  of  lectures,  accompanied  with  classes,  weekly  exercises, 
and  examinations  for  certificates.  " 

Each  course  upon  a  single  subject  consists  of  twelve  lectures,  one  be- 
ing given  each  week.  A  syllabus  containing  the  substance  of  the  course  is 
printed  in  pamphlet  form  and  distributed  at  the  opening  lecture.  It 


*    This  section  was  originally  published  in  the  Overland  Monthly  of  July  i889. 
t    The  following  quotations  are  mainly  from  Mr.  Richard  G.  Moultou'8  pamphlet,    "The  Uni- 
versity Extension  Movement." 


contains,  beside  an  outline  of  the,  lecturer's  thought,  references  to  books 
and  paragraphs  relating  to  'the  subject  and  arranged  under  appropriate 
topics.  The  syllabus  also  contains  an  exercise  for  each  week,  and  this  the 
student  is  expected  to  write  at  home  and  present  to  the  lecturer  for  inspec- 
tion. A  class  immediately  follows  or  precedes  each  lecture,  and  in  it  the 
subject  matter  of  the  previous  lecture  is  discussed.  Those  who  have  pre- 
pared their  weekly  exercises  to  the  satisfaction  of  the  lecturer  are  given  a 
final  examination,  not  however  by  the  lecturer,  but  by  an  appointee  of  the 
universitv.  To  those  who  pass  certificates  are  granted  for  each  twelve 
weeks'  course. 

An  important  pha>e  of  the  extension  movement  is  the  connection  of  its 
students  with  the  university.  By  combining  single  courses  an  extended 
plan  of  study  covering  three  years  is  formed,  and  those  who  successfully 
complete  this  work  ••  receive  the  title  of  'Students  Affiliated  to  the  Univer- 
sity.'  and  have  the  right  at  any  subsequent  time  to  proceed  to  the  univer- 
sity, and  obtain  its  degrees  with  two  years'  residence  in  place  of  three.  " 

Affiliated  students  are  required  to  complete  a  special  series  of  courses, 
a  general  series,  and  to  pass  an  elementary  examination.  The  special  series 
is  composed  of  six  single  courses  of  lectures,  the  general  series  of  two  single 
courses  belonging  to  a  different  group  from  that  of  the  special  series,  and 
the  elemnitarv  examination  comprises  Latin  and  one  foreign  language,  Eu- 
clid, books  1-1II,  and  algebra  t<>  quadratics,  unless  the  student  can  show  in 
some  oilier  wav  that  this  preliminary  education  has  been  obtained. 

The  organization  on  the  side  of  the  towns  to  meet  the  expenses  of  the 
lectures  is  varied.  The  funds  may  be  supplied  by  endowment,  by  a  society 
with  definite  subscriptions,  by  the  sale  of  membership  tickets,  or  by  a  com- 
bination of  these  methods.  The  lecturer's  fee  for  a  single  course  is  usually 
forty-five  pounds,  and  if  each  lecture  is  repeated  the  same  week  at  some 
other  extension  centre  the  fee  is  increased  by  one-half.  There  are  two  ses- 
sions in  the  year. 

Mr.  Moulton  say-  that  "where  comparison  has  been  possible  with 
work  done  in  the  universities  themselves,  the  general  advantage  of  such 
comparison  has  been  with  the  extension  students.'1  He  also  cites 
from  the  reports  of  various  persons  connected  with  the  movement,  to  show 
that  the  new  method  has  obtained  a  fair  footing  with  the  artisan  class.  On 
the  oilier  hand,  one  of  the  leaders  of  the  movement  declares  that  so  far  a.- 


70 

this  portion    of    the    community     is    concerned    the    effort   is   a   failure. 

The  first  class  to  reach  in  America  are  the  well-to-do  or  those  of  aver- 
age leisure.  Some  of  our  present  richest  people  had  few  opportunities  for 
education  when  they  were  young.  There  are  a  great  number  now  growing 
up  who  cannot  very  well  sequester  themselves  at  a  preparatory  school  and 
college  for  six  or  eight  years.  If  a  man  is  going  to  make  a  triumphant 
competitor  in  these  individualistic  days  he  must  begin  to  work  on  his 
armor  when  he  leaves  the  nursery.  He  must  go  through  a  severe  training, 
lasting  many  years.  But  at  the  same  time,  society,  while  opening  its  doors 
to  the  mere  rich  man,  and  being  amazingly  considerate  of  him  in  public, 
and  anxious  to  have  its  name  associated  with  his  or  his  wife's,  is  not  all  ad- 
miration of  him  when  he  is  away  ;  and  worthy  as  he  is,  he  cannot  but  think 
on  blue  days  that  some  of  the  general  love  for  him  is  feigned,  and  depend- 
ent on  cumbersome  external  things  not  himself.  So,  if  he  could  combine 
the  right  culture  and  education  with  his  parlor  and  parks,  he  feels  that  he 
would  be  able  to  command  the  respect  due  his  intrinsic  merits.  He  realizes 
that  if  he  went  through  college  he  might  get  too  much  culture,  and  have  his 
mind  drawn  away  from  central  good  of  life,  for  the  getting  of  actual  cul- 
ture and  the  getting  of  millions  are  incompatible.  But  a  certain  amount  of 
culture  he  must  have,  and  his  sons  must  have  a  certain  amount  of  it,  just 
enough  to  make  them  at  ease  at  a  dinner  party  of  professors,  though  not  so 
much  as  to  obstruct  the  money  making  and  money  keeping  proficiency. 

There  ought  therefore  in  this  country  to  be  no  difficulty  in  getting  the 
university  extension  system  heavily  endowed,  since  it  offers  learning  and 
cultivation  to  a  class  so  much  in  need  of  them,  and  so  amply  able  to  pay. 

Then  there  is  the  large  class  of  the  comparatively  well  off,  who  never 
expect  to  be  rich  but  whose  love  for  information  is  genuine.  They  cannot 
send  their  sons  or  daughters  to  college,  without  that  oppressive  economy 
described  by  Balzac  in  the  family  of  Eugene  Rastignac.  In  rather  the  ma- 
jority of  middle-class  families  even  this  deprivation  would  not  pay  the  bills. 
Besides,  after  going  through  college  a  son  of  such  a  family  would  be 
ashamed — and  all  his  friends  would  be  trebly  ashamed  for  him — to  take  a 
clerkship  for  ten  dollars  a  week  or  a  factory  position  at  one  dollar  and  fifty 
cents  a  day,  altho  possibly  by  the  time  of  his  graduation  the  family  ex- 
chequer would  be  so  drained  that  the  customary  legal  or  medical  course 
would  be  impracticable.  Therefore,  since  the  college  man  is  from  the  na- 


71 

ture  of  things  so  raised  above  every  common  vocation,  it  must  be  a  real 
question  of  every  middle-class  family  whether  their  exceptional  child  can 
be  spared  from  the  humble  bread-winning  ranks  to  those  of  painful  and  un- 
remunerative  culture. 

It  seems  as  if  university  extension  had  been  particularly  devised  for 
this  class  by  a  special  act  of  creative  kindness.  Of  those  who  have 
merely  taken  a  few  extension  courses,  the  public  will  be  generous  enough 
not  to  require  brilliant  public  careers.  They  may  keep  their  ten  dollar  po- 
sitions without  humiliation,  but  they  will  know  more  about  many  inexpen- 
sive refinements  and  pleasures,  and  will  care  less  about  playhouses  and 
secret  societies  and  torchlight  processions.  Adventitious  things  will  then 
lose  some  of  their  false  glamor,  and  discontent  must  wane  before  the  percep- 
tion that  riches  are  the  forces  and  capacities  of  the  individual. 

But  we  cannot  be  content  in  this  country  unless  the  artisan  classes  are 
also  reached.  Let  us  see  how  this  can  be  done.  No  very  large  number  of 
the  \\oikingmen  and  women  are  to  be  reached  by  merely  planting  lecture 
halls  in  various  parts  of  a  city,  and  extending  a  general  invitation  to  the 
people  to  come  up  and  be  educated.  They  are  tired  and  indifferent,  and 
want  amusement  at  the  end  of  their  monotonous,  exhausting  ten  hours. 
Moreover,  they  seem  in  a  certain  manner  incredulous  of  the  value  to  them 
of  nice  attempts  at  their  cultivation,  because  their  surroundings  are  all  in- 
imical t<»  aspirations  after  culture. 

To  win  this  class  the  unit  of  culture  should  be  houses  instead  of  halls. 
I"  IK  lei  the  breath  it  is  sometimes  admitted  that  refined  people  do  not  like 
lectures  very  well,  and  we  lately  heard  of  a  congregation  that  voted  to  limit 
the  sermon  to  ten  minutes  ;  but  here  are  people — the  laboring  people,  I 
mean — who  by  universal  consent  have  no  refinements  whatever,  except  re- 
finements of  Vice,  as  temperance  women  have  often  told  me,  and  yet  we  can- 
not understand  why  they  do  not  flock  gratefully  to  halls  the  moment  we 
open  the  doors  and  put  up  a  lecture  sign.  But  if  in  higher  circles  music 
precedes  and  a  banquet  follows  a  few  remarks  to  make  them  palatable,  we 
ought  to  remember  that  though  we  are  now  of  substantially  different  mould 
from  t  lie  masses,  and  our  blood  has  gone  through  long  ages  of  straining 
and  purification  denied  them  by  Providence,  our  ancestors,  and  the  nature  of 
things,  we  arose  somewhere  in  far  anterior  times  from  the  same  progenitor, 
and  bear  in  our  constitution  traces  of  similarity  to  them.  And  it  is  con- 


72 

ceivable  that  this  law  of  recreation  is  still  common  to  both  branches  of  the 
original  human  stock,  and  if  so,  when  we  go  among  the  ordinary  people  on 
our  noble  mission  of  mercy  and  uplifting,  pleasure  should  precede  and  be 
ever  the  companion  of  set  and  solid  instruction. 

An  adequate  clubhouse  would  contain,  besides  a  great  variety  of  other 
things,  a  hall  for  lectures,  concerts,  and  other  entertainments,  rooms,  for 
club  meetings  for  adults  and  young  people,  a  library  and  reading  room  a 
gymnasium  and  .bath  room,  apartments  for  those  conducting  the  work,  a 
dining  room  and  culinary  department ;  but  nothing  should  be  adequate  at 
first,  and  a  hall  with  a  picture  and  piano  in  it  would  be  a  brilliant  enough 
beginning. 

The  clubhouse  must  be  the  center  of  communal  life  for  the  district  in 
which  it  lies.  This  is  a  very  simple  way  of  making  a  neighborhood  whose 
sights  and  sounds  are  so  oppressive  that  just  to  visit  it  shortens  life  a  few 
minutes  a  place  to  which  all  sorts  of  people  come  in  their  carriages  to  be  di- 
verted, instructed,  or  inspired  to  start  a  clubhouse  of  their  own.  It  can 
transform  the  most  uninteresting  and  iniquitous  spot  of  the  modern  city  in- 
to a  social  experiment  of  higher  value  and  attractiveness  than  is  being  tried 
where  money  flows  in  rivulets.  The  well-to-do  have  no  such  centre  for 
common  life,  and  they  too  greatly  suffer  from  its  absence.  The  fashionable 
club  approaches  the  conception  ;  only  the  several  who  lay  some  claims  to 
fashion  but  cannot  pay  the  fees  feel  so  left  out ;  and  the  church,  when 
opened  at  all  hours  of  all  days,  and  supplied  with  parlors  and  periodicals 
and  books,  as  some  writer  has  suggested,  will  come  even  nearer  to  it,  be- 
cause a  less  number  will  be  left  out.  I  suggest  to  this  advocate  of  church 
expansion  to  plead  also  for  a  church  gymnasium,  since  one  of  the  best 
prayers  and  most  speedily  answered  a  man 'or  woman  can  offer  is  a  half  hour 
on  the  rowing  machine.  My  own  fancy  leads  me  to  believe  that  the  modern 
library  will  have  its  parlors  and  gymnasiums,  and  perhaps  become  more  the 
nucleus  of  organic  community  life  than  anything  else.  I  am  sure  the  up- 
per people  yearn  after  these  experiments  in  the  slums,  partly  because  they 
feel  how  little  they  themselves  as  yet  have  learned  about  the  conservation 
of  social  energy,  and  because  they  mean  to  profit  by  the  new  discoveries. 

Some  college  men  have  believed  that  they  were  more  trained  by  the 
influences  of  their  secret  societies  than  by  the  college  itself.  It  would  be  an 
education  to  frequent  one  of  these  clubhouses.  Those  who  came  would  find 


73 

various  proficiencies  not  possessed  by  them  within  their  reach,  and  would 
want  them.  The  extent  to  which  such  houses  would  open  a  new  wrorld 
to  the  tenement  population  cannot  be  understood  without  some  acquain- 
tance with  tenement-house  life. 

By  this  time  the  people  are  ready  for  extension  lectures.  We  need 
not  doubt  that  they  would  be  acceptable  to  many  under  these  new  condi- 
tions, and  that  they  would  soon  perceptibly  raise  the  character  of  a  wide 
circle  not  directly  reached  by  them. 

We  may  be  assured  that  this  way  of  propagating  culture  is  best,  from 
a  study  of  the  late  manner  of  treating  lunatics.  Formerly  insane  persons 
were  chained  in  dungeons,  but  now  it  is  the  custom — except  in  Chicago — to 
see  that  sunlight  enters  their  rooms,  to  supply  them  with  invigorating  diet, 
to  put  them  at  easy  labor  in  the  open  air.  Inmates  of  insane  hospitals  live 
beyond  comparison  more  hygieuically  than  inmates  of  city  tenement  districts, 
and  the  former  often  recover.  So  the  day  has  come  when  social  maladies, 
both  of  mind  and  body,  should  be  treated  with  sunlight  and  pure  air,  and  a 
generous  diet,  and  music.  A  weekly  excursion  to  the  country  would  prob- 
ably improve  the  morals  of  the  people  of  the  slums  more  than  a  weekly  lec- 
ture, but  if  the  outing  were  preparatory  to  the  lecture  the  latter  would  attain 
its  max i mum  of  effectiveness.  Just  as  attempts  to  reason  nervous  patients 
int  >  Irjaltli  h-.ive  gi\\»ii  placa  to  direct  physical  treatment  and  hygiene,  in 
whatever  is  undertaken  t'<»r  the  artisan  he  should  first  be  given  the  oppor- 
tunity, 

"To  mix  his  blood  with  sunshine,  and  \o  take 
The  wind  into  his  pulses." 

Hence  the  perennial  importance  of  pleasure  in  the  schedule  of  educa- 
tion. 

.A  woman  who  has  been  active  in  work  for  the  young  people  of  lower 
New  York  writes  :  "The  dancing  evenings  are  not  only  pleasant  to  me  for 
the  sake  of  the  enjoyment  of  the  boys  and  girls,  but  in  thinking  over  the 
(Juild  work  in  relation  to  the  two  clubs  £the  one  for  boys  and  the  other  for 
girls],  it  seems  to  me  that  these  evenings  of  all  others  have  had  the  most 
satisfactory  and  rcfinin«r  influence."  The  other  evenings  referred  to  aim 
at  more  direct  instruction.  Thus  we  shall  overcome  the  difficulties  of  reach- 
ing the  artisan  class  with  university  extension. 


74 


2.    THE  SOCIOLOGICAL  FUNCTION  OF  UNIVERSITIES.* 

However  superficially  we  look  at  society,  it  is  clear  that  old  things  are 
passing  away  and  new  things  are  to  be.  What  once  appealed  to  men  no 
longer  moves  them  as  before.  The  church  is  losing  its  hold,  the  common 
schools  are  attacked,  we  hear  of  the  university  as  out  of  joint  with  life.  So 
it  is  necessary  to  plan  movements  that  all  can  believe  and  assist  in,  particu- 
larly with  reference  to  helping  the  many  who  are  compelled  to  lead  unsani- 
tary lives  in  cities. 

It  is  important  to  bear  always  in  mind  the  central  difficulty,  and  to 
arrange  all  sociological  and  philanthrophic  schemes  with  it  before  us.  This 
central  difficulty  is  that  the  working  people  as  a  class  do  not  receive  enough 
pay  for  their  work,  that  a  considerable  portion  of  the  social  product  that 
belongs  to  them,  is  intercepted  before  it  reaches  them.  Diluted  philan- 
throphy  is  one  thing ;  anybody  can  '  go  slumming  '  in  coupe  and  kids,  or 
send  a  Christmas  turkey  to  employes  whom  he  underpays  all  other  days  of 
the  year  ;  but  this  sort  of  philanthropy,  and  any  other  that  does  not  have 
the  wage-problem  before  it,  are  insufficient. 

The  people  must  first  learn  what  to  do,  and  thinkers  ought  to  be  striv- 
ing to  tell  them,  for  the  wage-problem  is  economic  and  ethical.  But  our 
universities  are  rather  exalted  and  exclusive,  and  think  a  little  cheaply  of 
propositsons  to  turn  energy  that  might  be  devoted  to  monographic  historic 
insights,  to  the  solution  of  problems  that  have  not  yet  receded  to  the  realms 
of  pure  and  cool  theory.  On  themes  relating  to  Socrates  and  Seneca,  or 
the  text  in  which  they  spoke,  our  universities  are  laudably  alive,  but  is  it 
not  curious  that  in  the  objects  at  which  those  gentlemen  aimed,  the  very 
same  universities  are  unanimously  torpid  and  comatose  ?  There  are  living 
ethical  problems  and  the  great  English  colleges  are  cordially  facing  them, 
while  our  representative  college  people  for  the  most  part  deem  such  lay  pro- 
ceedings opposed  to  the  university  idea.  Perhaps  our  retrospective  feelings 
will  hereafter  be  more  comfortable  if  we  hasten  rapidly  over  this  period. 

Assuming  that  the  university  idea  will  grow,  which  cannot  be  doubted, 
what  shall  the  university  undertake  in  these  modern  times,  and  what  can  it 

*    First  published  iu  The  Open  Court,  January  2,  18SO. 


75 

suitably    encourage    and    support?     I    will    sketch    a    brief    program. 

The  Kindergarten  is  the  basis  of  all  good  educational  work.  The 
universities  should  give  more  attention  to  the  development  of  these  begin- 
nings. The  Kindergarten  is  likewise  the  basis  of  much  that  is  best  in  so- 
ciological work.  Every  neighborhood  in  the  worse  portions  of  cities  should 
have  its  Kindergarten-room,  and  these  rooms  should  be  utilized  for  some  of 
the  following  projects. 

1.  Economic  Conferences.     This  enterprise  has  already  been  initiated 
in    Chicago,   where     series   of  addresses  on  economic  subjects  have  been 
given  to  the   public  by   representative   men  from  the  camps  of  labor  and 
capital  respectively.     The  two  sides  are  brought   together,  the  grievances  of 
each   are  heard  by  the  other.     Work  of  this  kind  should  be  organized  in 
every  city,  and  it  presents  few  difficulties. 

2.  Concert^  and  Lectures.     A   hall  may   be  obtained  in   the  poorer 
part  of  town  where  from  time  to  time  concerts,   arranged  by  the  well-to-do, 
and  lectures  shall  be  given   free  to  those  specially   invited,  or  at  a  nominal 
cost — if  concerts — to  the  public.     The  low   Variety  Theatre  now  occupies 
the  field,  and  in  regard  to  it  we  think  everybody  must  agree  in  its  condem- 
nation, with  a  writer  in    The  Westminster  Review  QH  "  The  Characteristics 
of  American  Cities.  "  *     He  says,  "  The  'Varieties'  Theatre  is  a  vile  can- 
cer, which  is  eating  the  life  out  of  many  a  community  in  the  United  States, 
and  nowhere  is  there  a   viler  one  than  in    Portland  in  Oregon.     It  is  to  be 
hoped   that  in  time   the  municipality  may  provide  for  the  native  working- 
cla^ses  within  its   limits,    entertainments  as  decent,   sober,  and  honorable  as 
those  which  the  Chinese  have  provided  for  themselves.     To  this  a  Western 
critic   will  at  once   reply   that  the  *  Varieties '  are   visited  only  by  the  lower 
class  of  Americans,  and  that  the  vice  of  these  classes  stops  there  ;  whereas 
the  Chinese — decent  enough  in  public — are  in  private   profoundly  immoral, 
having,  in  fact,  no  sense  of   what  morality  is.     We   are  convinced  that  this 
statement  is  exaggerated.     The  '  Varieties  '  theatre — with  its  cheap  debit  of 
the  corruptions  of  Europe  and  of  the  great  cities  of  the   American    Atlantic 
coast — does    reach  and  corrupt   other  than  the  lowest  American  classes.     A 
theatre  into  which  decent  women  will  not  go,  but  which  their  husbands  and 
brothers   think    it   no   shame   occasionally   to   frequent,  is   a   public  danger 


*     Th4Wtttl*i*»ttr  II ?r\*>u\  July.  183J. 


76 

which    cannot    be    too  soon  done  away  with."     Is  it  not  time  to  begin  to 
supplant  the  "  Varieties"  with  something  better? 

3.  Taking  Residence.     Young  men,   graduate  students  of  the  Uni- 
versity, and  others,  may  go  into  those  parts  of  town  where  higher  influences 
are  needed,   simply  to  live.     They   would  continue  their  studies  and  work 
elsewhere  as  before.     Perhaps  nothing  is  so  necessary  as  a  movement  of  this 
kind,  and  it  involves  no  machinery.     Any  one  can  do  it.     If  the  rent  of  a 
room  in  the  better  quarter  of  the  city  can  be  paid,  the  less  rent  in  a  worse 
district  can  be  met  easier. 

4.  University  Extension  Lectures.     Out  of  2d  and  3d  the  Extension 
Lecture  would  in  time  naturally  grow. 

5.  A  University  and  City  Committee.     To  promote  the  mutual  in- 
terests of  the  university  and  city  in  these  and  various  other  ways,  to  obtain 
for  the  city  the  greatest  advantages  from  the  university,  and  for  the  univer- 
sity the  fullest  support  of  the  city,  a  conference  committee,  composed  of  a 
small  number  of  representative  persons  from  each  body,  might  be  estab- 
lished.    Every  city  of   importance   either  contains  a   university  or  has  one 
near  it. 

What  would  be  the  results  of  this  expansion  of  the  university?  I 
have  elsewhere  described  some  of  them,  and  I  will  quote  from  that  paper.  * 
"A  man  in  the  college  or  university  looks  at  the  world  through  spectacles, 
and  it  takes  him  a  year  or  more  to  learn  to  conduct  himself  with  perfect 
rationality  in  real  life.  But  if  he  goes  at  once  to  teach,  he  makes  his  faulty 
judgments  inveterate.  A  few  months  with  sturdy,  un veneered,  plain- 
speaking,  substance-wishing  men  of  physical  toil  would  vaporize  many  dear 
delusions.  A  near  acquaintance  with  uncompromising  facts  and  persons 
wishing  to  know  definitely  what  to  do  and  resolved  to  do  it,  would  be  in- 
valuable training  to  him.  It  would  be  both  a  pedagogical  and  humani- 
tarian study.  It  would  teach  him  sincerity  ;  it  would  show  him  what  there 
is  for  educated  men  to  do  in  the  world.  It  would  instruct  him  how  to  be 
plain,  and  direct,  and  simple,  and  forever  tolerant,  for  it  would  let  him  into 
the  secrets  of  human  nature,  laying  bare  its  needs  and  defects  and  workings. 
The  average  teacher  has  had  no  experience  with  which  to  compare  youths. 
He  has  never  mingled  and  struggled  with  unprofessional  men,  nor  visited 
insane  hospitals. 

*  Journal  of  Education,  June  7th,  1888.  Art.  '  University  Extension. " 


77 

' '  The  educated  man  should  lead  society  out  of  its  prejudices  toward 
breadth  ;  he  should  therefore  not  become  an  aristocrat  nor  partial ;  he 
should  affiliate  with  all  classes.  Nothing  would  lift  and  educate  and  en- 
courage the  people  like  this  intercourse.  The  university  is  the  product  of 
all  society  ;  wage-workers  have  helped  to  create  it,  their  disaffection  would 
annihilate  it ;  the  artisan  class  has  then  a  claim  to  its  direct  and  intentional 
interest.  A  conduit  must  be  formed  between  the  university  and  the  people 
which  will  give  the  latter  the  immediate  benefit  of  progressive  knowledge. 
The  very  act  of  establishing  this  relation  between  the  working-classes  and 
the  highest  educators  would  be  an  immense  stride  toward  mutual  compre- 
hension of  classes  and  social  harmony.  I  have  already  hinted  at  its  value 
as  helping  to  furnish  truthful  conceptions  to  economist  and  moralist.  It  is 
no  less  bad  to  sit  in  a  study  and  theorize  about  the  needs  of  an  economic 
class  without  ever  going  among  them,  than  it  would  to  speculate  about  am- 
putations without  having  seen  a  knife ;  also  a  morality  to-day  that  does  not 
take  hold  of  actual  situations  and  renovate  real  lives,  that  is  not  social  and 
cannot  improve  the  relations  of  social  classes,  is  abortive  and  metempirical. 
Byjt  for  this  purpose  it  is  necessary  to  know  society  and  classes  first  hand.  " 

It  will  be  readily  seen  that  I  am  inclined  to  doubt  if  the  university  is 
the  highest  court  of  appeal  on  all  subjects.  In  the  days  of  Lord  Salisbury's 
connection  with  the  Saturday  Review,  when  that  journal  ''made  a  specialty 
of  scorn  and  contempt  for  everybody  who  did  not  keep  hunters  or  had  not 
iiTaduated  from  <  )xford  or  Cambridge,"  the  university  had  a  theory  of  it- 
self at  which  our  time  is  amused  ;  but  the  tradition  of  those  days  is  hardly 
extinct.  "  The  higher  education  is  not  for  the  helots  of  society,  but  for  the 
captains,  "  said  some  recent  writer,  and  unfortunately  this  view  finds  sup- 
porters in  the  university  itself.  Professor  Swing  is  wiser.  "After  the 
youth  has  passed  through  the  common  school,  of  country  or  city,  self-edu- 
cation not  only  becomes  possible,  but  easy.  "  *  I  would  say  more.  The 
education  that  a  young  man  may  obtain  by  keeping  himself  clear  of  the 
university,  so  long  as  it  is  subject  to  ideas  that  at  present  have  mastery  in 
it,  may  be  much  better  than  he  could  obtain  in  the  university  itself.  The 
university  lessens  the  personality  of  many  men.  But  universities  are  enter- 
in  •r  upon  a  period  of  expansion,  and  the  main  question  is%  When  will  the 

*     See  article  "Aid*  to  S^if- Education,"  in  The  Christian  Union.  DectmberG,  1HK8. 


78 

breath    of    life    be    breathed    into    this    or    that    educational    body  ? 

If  there  were  some  single  organization  devoted  not  to  all  reforms  and 
good  works  but  to  social  reforms  specifically,  and  this  were  to  take  these  new 
projects  in  charge,  they  would  soon  prove  their  feasibility  and  usefulness. 
Perhaps  the  Nationalist  Societies  which  are  springing  up  so  rapidly,  will 
appropriate  this  field.  The  power  of  education  has  not  yet  been  fairly  tried 
in  matters  that  relate  to  the  improvement  of  society,  and  it  should  be  the 
object  of  an  organization  for  social  progress  to  institute  an  education  based 
on  its  conception  of  society  as  it  should  be,  and  tending  to  make  the  better 
arrangement  real.  In  connection  with  universities,  or  with  the  aid  of  inde- 
pendent university  men,  they  could  inaugurate  the  work  here  suggested. 


3.     THE  ENDOWMENT  OF  INNOVATION. 

Plans  for  University  Extension  are  being  formed  in  various  parts  of 
America.  As  yet  our  university  learning  reaches  only  a  slender  portion  of 
the  population.  The  majority  of  people  do  not  understand  the  aims  of  uni- 
versities nor  do  they  sympathize  with  them ;  the  universities  on  their  part 
do  not  comprehend  the  people  or  the  needs  of  the  people.  A  university 
professor  of  philosophy  and  conduct  in  the  West  complacently  deposed  in 
the  presence  of  fifty  witnesses  that  the  universities  embody  the  highest 
thought  and  the  profoundest  wisdom  of  our  period,  altho  he  had  just  ended 
a  vigorous  denuciation  of  some  of  the  leading  progressive  movements  of 
the  time,  movements  that  will  soon  make  his  mode  and  mould  of  thought 
seem  a  thousand  years  old.  A  university  colony  has  its  standards  and 
ideals  and  pastes  upon  them  the  words  « truest '  and  '  highest, '  as  a  novice 
in  botany  picks  up  some  plant  that  pleases  him  and  bottles  it  and  writes  a 
grand  name  on.  We  may  call  the  world  square  if  it  pleases  us.  Hence 
the  university  is  often  an  attenuator  of  previous  culture  more  than  a  pro- 
spector for  culture  that  suits  and  satisfies  the  present. 

On  the  other  hand  the  university  has  many  important  principles  and 
facts  hidden  in  its  vaults.  There  is  sound  knowledge  enough  buried  there 
to  considerably  extend  and  intensity  human  life,  even  to  dissipate  the  vul- 
garity of  a  race  whose  god  is  Money.  But  vulgar  the  crowd  must  remain, 


79 

for  most  of  tthem  have  no  way  to  gain  admission  to  these  treasures  before 
vulgarity  has  stamped  its  deep  and  final  impress  upon  them,  and  then  they 
no  longer  care  for  the  grand  and  high.  You  will  notice  how  excellent  a 
university  professor  rates  himself.  He  cannot  mingle  with  the  herd  with- 
out nausea.  To  a  selected  few  he  can  unbend  and  impart :  not  to  you  and 
me,  common  offspring  of  the  ground.  He  has  not  time,  energy,  capacity, 
taste  for  us.  But  we  nevertheless  want  his  wares  and  have  them  at  last  we 
must  though  universities  of  new  patterns  be  built  and  old  ones  be  turned  to 
the  storage  of  fertilizers,  the  approaching  utility,  we  are  told,  of  the  English 
parliament  houses.  There  can  be  no  forgiveness  for  withholding  from  a 
man  the  knowledge  that  would  add  one  hour  or  one  joy  to  his  life.  A  des- 
picable thing  is  the  sham  wisdom  that  trickles  down  from  the  universities  to 
the  multitude.  The  scholar  is  apt  to  be  somewhat  of  an  aristocrat,  and  to 
profess  not  much  inclination  for  common  folks,  however  common  his  father 
and  mother  might  have  been.  The  American  can  change  his  skin  in  less 
than  ten  years.  I  know  of  an  inhabitant  of  the  City  of  Brotherly  Love  on 
the  South  Side  of  Market  Street,  who  changed  his  in  less  than  two  years. 
He  formerly  lived  on  the  north  side  of  Market  street,  five  minutes  out  of 
the  jurisdiction  of  Brotherly  Love.  But  by  carefully  saving  the  earnings 
of  liis  working  men  he  made  a  fortune  and  moved  over  the  sentimental  bar- 
ricades into  civilization  and  in  less  than  two  years  could  not  remember  that 
he  had  ever  lived  any  where  else.  Here  is  a  problem  for  Th.  Ribot  and 
his  cases  of  double  and  alienated  personality. 

It  is  past  imagining  why  the  mentally  emaciated  multitudes  do  not 
hreak  into  the  hakeries  of  knowedge  and  use  the  ovens  that  are  being  kept 
red  hot  night  and  day  to  supply  a  few  gouty  minds  with  pastry,  to  cook 
wheat  bread  and  cow's  flesh  for  their  absolute  necessities.  Carlyle  seems  to 
have  wondered  over  the  same  inexplicable  circumstance  fifty  years  ago 
when  he  wrote  Chartism,  and  unless  some  prophet  like  Mohammed  by  and 
by  comes  who  can  pray  and  dedlaim  and  handle  a  sword  also,  fifty  years 
move  will  not  render  his  words  antiquated.  "Who  would  suppose  that 
education  were  a  thing  which  had  to  be  advocated  on  the  ground  of  local 
expediency,  01-  indeed  on  any  ground?  As  if  it  stood  not  on  the  basis  of 
everlasting  duty,  as  a  prime  necessity  of  man.  It  is  a  thing  that  should 
need  no  advocating  ;  much  as  it  does  actually  need.  To  impart  the  gift  of 
thinking  to  those  who  cannot  think,  and  yet  who  could  in  that  case  think  : 


80 

this,  one  would  imagine,  was  the  first  function  a  government  had  to  set 
about  discharging.  Were  it  not  a  cruel  thing  to  see,  in  any  province  of  an 
empire,  the  inhabitants  living  all  mutilated  in  their  limbs,  each  strong  man 
with  his  right  arm  lamed?  How  much  crueller  to  find  the  strong  soul, 
with  its  eyes  still  sealed,  its  eyes  extinct  so  that  it  sees  not !  Light  has 
come  into  the  world,  but  to  this  poor  peasant  it  has  come  in  vain.  For  six 
thousand  years  the  Sons  of  Adam,  in  sleepless  effort,  have  been  devising, 
doing,  discovering ;  in  mysterious  infinite  indissoluble  communion,  warring, 
a  little  band  of  brothers,  against  the  great  black  empire  of  Necessity  and 
Night ;  they  have  accomplished  such  a  conquest  and  conquests  :  and  to  this 
man  it  is  all  as  if  it  had  not  been.  The  four-and- twenty  letters  in  the 
Alphabet  are  still  Runic  enigmas  to  him.  He  passes  by  on  the  other  side  ; 
and  that  great  Spiritual  Kingdom,  the  toilwon  conquest  of  his  own  brothers, 
all  that  his  brothers  have  conquered,  is  a  thing  non-extant  for  him.  An 
invisible  empire  ;  he  knows  it  not,  suspects  it  not.  And  is  it  not  his  withal ; 
the  conquests  of  his  own  brothers,  the  lawfully  acquired  possession  of  all 
men?  Baleful  enchantment  lies  over  him,  from  generation  to  generation  ; 

he  knows  not  that  such  an  empire  is  at  all Heavier  wrong  is  not  done 

under  the  sun.  It  lasts  from  year  to  year,  from  century  to  century;  the 
blinded  sire  slaves  himself  out  and  leaves  a  blinded  son  ;  and  men,  made  in 
the  image  of  God,  continue  as  two-legged  beasts  of  labor ; — and  in  the  lar- 
gest empire  of  the  world,  it  is  a  debate  whether  a  small  fraction  of  the 
Revenue  of  one  Day  (30,000/.  is  but  that)  shall,  after  Thirteen  Centuries, 
be  laid  out  on  it,  or  not  laid  out  on  it.  " 

With  sovereign  American  liberality  we  on  this  side  of  the  sea,  a  half 
century  later,  snug-harbored  amid  fabulous  natural  resources  and  riches  of 
unparalleled  degree,  do  carry  many  people  as  far  as  their  letters.  But  af- 
terwards it  is  much  the  same  as  if  they  could  not  read,  for  they  must 
always  work  and  hunger.  And  the  things  that  dignify  life  and  beautify  it 
and  give  it  happy  length,  these  are  still  Runic  enigmas  to  them  ;  the  con- 
quests of  broad  new  acres  of  light  are  to  these  present-day  toilers  as  if  they 
had  not  been.  The  great  heritage  of  the  Past,  the  distilled  wisdom  of  man- 
kind's infinite  labors  and  sorrows,  the  knowledge  of  life  and  its  preserving 
laws  are  here,  in  our  towns,  in  the  minds  of  some  favored  men,  in  books — 
all  kept  sedulously  away  from  most  of  us  who  go  pur  barren  way  dying  for 
these  secrets  of  life.  It  is  a  riddle  past  solution  why  the  hosts  of  maimed 


81 

bodies  and  souls  do  not  organize  themselves  into  armies  and  lay  siege  to  the 
fortifications  that  shut  them  out  in  the  marshes  and  miasmas  of  ignorance 
and  capitulate  never  until  these  frowning  walls  come  down  and  the  barbaric 
guns  of  private  and  privileged  knowledge  are  spiked. 

But  of  a  few  men  we  cannot  ask  miracles  :  for  there  are  a  few  college 
men  whose  blood  is  still  circulating  and  vibrant.  The  public  is  not  gener- 
ous to  them.  It  puts  heavy  taxes  on  their  time  and  is  thankless.  If 
money  could  be  supposed  to  reward  for  the  kindling  and  delivering  of  souls, 
this  deed,  supremest  of  all  deeds  done  on  earth,  is  not  rated  high  by  the 
plutocracy. 

So,  clearly,  some  new  educational  machinery  is  needed  for  the  work 
that  the  present  force  and  organization  are  totally  inadequate  to  do,  and 
from  the  example  of  University  Extension  a  sufficient  system  of  education 
for  the  people  may  germinate.  There  are  many  persons  who  have  said  to 
themselves,  'The  pulpit, -the  liberal  platform,  the  occasional  lecture  does 
not  furnish  us  the  broad  and  specific  knowledge  that  we  desire;  we  have 
not  time  to  confront  the  vast  literature  of  every  subject,  we  cannot  go  to 
college. '  The  busiest  men  are  learning  that  sound  ideas  and  a  well-ordered 
life  have  intimate  connection  with  a  knowledge  of  facts,  enlightenment 
about  the  >it nation,  and  are  not  solely  the  reward  of  raw  enthusiastic  im- 
pulses to  be  right.  These  men  ask  for  a  digest  of  the  new  knowledge  and 
thinking,  petition  that  their  wants  be  a  little  considered  in  the  educational 
mechanism,  that  the  fruits  of  culture  be  placed  within  their  reach  without 
their  abdication  of  a  working  life. 

The  I' nivei-sity  will  go  part  way  to  meet  this  class  by  an  extension  of 
its  organization.  What  the  university  serves  to  the  people  will  be  only 
that  which  has  received  the  approbation  of  a  slow-moving,  over-estimated 
coterie  that  composes  the  learned  world,  which  the  ever  reliable  Walter  • 
Buirehot  judged  when,  correcting  the  opinion  of  the  French  poet  Beranger 
that  •asylums  of  the  commonplace  academies  must  ever  be, '  he  said,  "But 
that  sentence  is  too  harsh  :  the  true  one  is — the  academies  are  the  asylums 
of  the  ideas  and  the  tastes  of  the  last  age.  'By  the  time, '  I  have  heard  a 
most  eminent  man  of  science  observe,  '  by  the  time  a  man  of  science  attains 
eminence  on  any  subject  he  becomes  a  nuisance  upon  it,  because  he  is  sure 
t<>  retain  errors  which  were  in  vogue  when  he  was  young,  but  which  the 
new  race  have  refuted.  '  Those  are  the  sort  of  ideas  which  find  their 


82 

home  in  academies,  and  out*  of  their  dignified  windows  pooh-pooh  new 
things.  "  *  Always  we  must  remember  that  what  the  universities  will  con- 
vey to  the  people  is  the  best  thought  of  the  last  age  and  not  of  this,  thought 
that  ought  to  be  taken  charily  and  strengthened  by  infusions  from  the 
higher  and  newer  sources. 

Happily  we  need  not  depend  altogether  upon  the  university  for  the 
best  progressive  work.  Two  things  only  are  necessary  to  begin  an  inde- 
pendent movement :  a  number  of  persons  desiring  lectures,  willing  to  pro- 
vide a  place  for  their  delivery  and  payment  of  the  lecturer's  fee,  and 
lecturers  properly  prepared  for  the  work. 

As  churches  broaden  they  will  become  places  for  popular  education, 
Social  Colleges  for  the  people.  They  may  readily  become  centres  of  much 
higher  and  truer  education  than  the  localities  now  particularly  licensed  for 
brain  exercitation .  Whatever  a  man  does  being  conduct,  and  the  aim  of 
education  being  to  elevate  conduct,  the  traditional  aim  and  sentiment  of  the 
churches  are  more  exactly  educational  than  those  of  the  schools.  With  the 
decay  of  transmitted  theology  these  sentiments  will  play  an  invaluable  part 
in  an  education  as  large  as  human  nature. 

In  the  immediate  present  these  new  educational  nuclei  may  be  started 
at  will  by  any  group  that  can  command  a  private  parlor  or  public  hall.  It 
is  the  especial  opportunity  for  that  large  liberal  element  which  has  been 
thus  far  extremely  slow  to  devise  effectual  methods  for  propagating  enlight- 
enment. Every  town  has  them  and  in  every  town  they  might  play  the  part 
of  the  redeeming  remnant.  In  every  avenue  of  opinion  and  action  they 
could  become  the  initiators.  The  ideas  of  a  community  are  changed  through 
frequent  hearing  of  broader  ideas  and  the  identification  of  a  handful  of  per- 
sons with  them.  Familiarity  wears  away  opposition.  Singularly  enough 
society  has  institutions  for  the  preservation  and  resuscitation  of  nearly  every 
conceivable  thing,  but  no  institution  for  improvers.  The  world  has  always 
accorded  them  a  chilly  reception  and  buried  them  as  soon  as  it  could.  And 
now  it  comes  to  light  scientifically  that  progress  and  not  rest  is  the  organic 
law  of  species,  which  lays  upon  society  the  novel  necessity  of  providing  a 
college  of  innovators  and  going  to  school  to  those  whom  in  other  days  it 
would  have  piously  burned.  It  is  useless  to  antagonize  Nature  and  if  evo- 

*    Physics  an'l  Politics,  n  2. 


83 

lution  is  the  law  of  ideas  and  practice  it  were  economy  of  life  and  labor  to 
place  ourselves  on  Nature's  side  and  work  for  evolution  with  her.  Man 
has  ever  behaved  toward  nature  as  an  enemy,  resenting  the  efforts  of  this 
benignant  Mother  to  bring  him  to  a  state  of  comfort  and  respectability. 
Nature  has  always  been  equal  to  the  emergency,  brushing  aside  the  palpita- 
ting impediments  that  opposed  themselves  to  her  will  and  never  abandoning 
the  purpose  to  make  something  of  man  in  spite  of  himself.  Man  is  like  a 
convivial  Indian  brave  who  defied  a  locomotive  engine  and  said  it  should  not 
pass. 

But  thus  far  we  have  labored  under  a  misapprehension,  now  happily 
dissipated,  that  life  is  static,  that  nature  wished  to  be  opposed,  and  had  a 
crown  of  glory  for  those  who  resisted  her  inducements  to  change.  Now  we 
establish  a  partnership  with  nature  for  the  specific  object  of  change.  The 
elements  of  this  coalition  on  the  human  side  are  the  liberals  and  that  exten- 
sive class  of  educated  young  men  and  women  who  have  followed  long 
courses  of  study  at  the  educational  institutions  and  who  find  in  the  end  no 
acceptable  place  to  apply  their  talents.  The  latter  are  specialists  and  wish 
to  contimie  their  chosen  researches,  hence  neither  the  pulpit  nor  free  plat- 
form is  a  field  ;  but  they  are  not  specialists  to  the  extremity  of  binding 
their  tin  night  to  a  dislocated  section  of  time  and  space,  priming  away  every 
divaricating  interest,  insisting  upon  a  single  phase  of  being  as  central  and 
inclusive,  censuring  others  for  not  accepting  their  limited  perceptions  as 
universal  laws  of  being  and  conduct.  They  are  not  ready  to  feed  the  dis- 
ease <»f  institutional  education  by  ensconcing  themselves  in  the  colleges  and 
universities  as  conservative  repeaters.  Nor  can  they  sacrifice  their  freedom 
of  irrowth  and  expression  to  the  deviations  and  prevarications  of  schools 
whose  source  of  life  is  popularity  and  pretension.  They  are  conscious  that 
an  institution  is  not  the  place  for  a  true  teacher.  For  a  teacher  is  of  slim 
consequence  unless  he  can  be  admired  by  his  pupil,  and  the  most  important 
thing  that  any  man  does  for  another  he  does  through  his  personality.  It  is 
not  by  lectures,  conferences,  explanations  or  studied  efforts,  but  the  man 
back  of  these  superficial  and  imperfect  modes  of  expression,  the  deeper  and 
essential  elements  of  him,  which  have  lessons  to  impart  that  language  and 
volition  are  unequal  to,  and  which  the  mind  of  the  learner  will  grasp  and  grow 
on  if  they  are  there  or  miss  and  starve  for  if  absent.  This  is  the  highest  thing 
in  education.  If  the  specialist  have  not  these  intangible  lessons  to  teach  out 


84 

of  his  nature,  he  cannot  be  a  great  teacher  of  anything  ;  and  though  first  in 
the  Kingdom  of  Mathematicians  he  is  not  a  true  and  sufficing  instructor  of 
mathematics.  In  an  earlier  day  this  truth  was  so  forcibly  realized  among 
us  by  the  people  of  a  strong  religious  cast  that  piety  was  deemed  prerequi- 
site, if  not  complete,  equipment  for  a  professor  in  any  branch  ;  but  now  the 
reaction  against  this  partial  sight  has  come  on  so  vigorously  as  to  hide  the 
truth  that  our  forefathers  enjoyed.  Piety  stood  for  character  and  person- 
ality, for  certain  qualities  behind  an  educated  memory  and  understanding 
that  transformed  these  latter  things  from  clay  to  gold,  and  made  it  safe  and 
estimable  to  have  an  educated  memory  and  understanding.  For  our  fore- 
fathers were  quite  knowing  to  the  fact  that  many  people  of  eminent  wisdom 
and  virtues  in  past  times  owed  none  of  their  excellence  to  scholarly  disci- 
plines since  in  these  they  had  been  wanting  wholly,  and  they  must  have 
observed  even  in  their  own  day  a  circumstance  very  striking  in  our's,  that 
eminent  wisdom  and  superlative  virtues  are  rarely  produced  by  the  very 
perfect  contrivances  for  their  creation  which  the  moderns  have  arrived  at. 
All  this  is  in  keeping  with  university  aims.  A  man  of  generous  pattern 
would  be  too  large  for  a  university.  Universities  peer  about  the  world  with 
a  candle  for  intellectual  uimbleness,  and  when  they  find  an  uncommonly 
agile  person  they  blazon  his  name  through  the  land  as  the  great  coming 
teacher.  Now  Socrates  was  a  great  teacher  and  Jesus  also,  and  Plato  cer- 
tainly knew  the  secret  of  great  teaching,  and  important  as  it  is  that  these 
new  and  banqueted  athletes  should  know  perfectly  the  tactics  of  their  ring, 
it  is  not  less  important  that  they  should  have  the  secret  of  Socrates  and  Je- 
sus and  Plato,  and  if  they  have  not  this  secret  let  them  sit  apart  and  write 
monographs  but  never  undertake  to  teach. 

The  time  is  certainly  near  for  the  evolution  of  another  species  of  edu- 
cation, a  more  perfect  flower,  above  the  university  and  above  the  church, 
where  human  forces  will  be  unfettered  and  the  conscious  aim  will  be  perfect 
men. 


85 


Nationalism.  * 


At  length  a  few  people  have  found  one  another  out  and  broken  silence. 
In  sorrow  and  indignation  they  long  witnessed  the  foolishness  and  wrong  of 
society  but  found  no  vent  for  their  effort,  no  audience  for  their  counsels. 
This  is  changed.  The  issue  of  the  Twentieth  century  has  been  accepted, 
the  gauntlet  of  imbecility  and  evil  taken  up. 

I  look  upon  this  Club  as  an  ethical  revolt  of  our  most  independent  class. 
The  fictions  of  American  pre-eminence  have  stilled  their  misgivings  and  de- 
layed their  thought,  but  the  iron  has  begun  to  pierce  their  own  souls.  In 
the  class  of  medium  wealth  there  are  many  people  who  would  like  to  be  hon- 
est but  discover  that  they  cannot  be  ;  there  are  many  who  crave  no  magnifi- 
cence but  only  days  of  moderation  and  peace,  and  these  are  denied  them. 
They  are  at  length  asking  why.  And  this  question  once  asked  has  startled 
and  astounded  many.  It  has  set  unwonted  trains  of  thought  going.  Why 
do  so  many  turn  old  at  the  threshold  of  life?  Why  is  such  abundance  of 
shining  beauty  and  freshness  eclipsed  in  their  radiant  morning  to  shine  no 
more;  kingdoms  of  talent  and  genius  and  sweetness  lost  in  a  struggle  for 
mere  bread  and  breath  ? 

While  this  curse  rested  only  on  the  proletarians  we  have  been  able  to 
bear  it.  Yes,  our  virtue  was  sufficient  for  that.  But  when  our  own  loved 
ones  are  stricken,  then  we  say  the  social  disease  is  creeping  toward  the  vi- 
tals and  in  fear  \ve  cry  for  sneeor. 

*    Lecture   before  the  Nationalist Club  of  Oakland,  Cal  .  in  18b9,  with  eome  additions. 


86 

The  strength  of  the  Nationalists  lies  in  their  splendid  abandonment  of 
policy  and  preverication.  No  other  class  institution  has  dared  to  announce 
itself  the  unconditional  champion  of  social  regeneration,  none  have  yielded 
entire  submission  to  the  thought  that  nothing  is  sacred,  be  it  theory  or  cus- 
tom or  institution,  that  hinders  the  complete  working  out  of  a  perfected 
society.  Others  say,  'Wait,  let  us  feel  our  way';  the  Nationalist  says, 
'  We  have  already  waited  too  long,  let  us  begin  at  once. '  Others  cry  for 
caution  and  conciliation  and  the  enlistment  of  financial  influences  ;  'beg  that 
nobody  be  antagonized;  the  Nationalists  points  to 'the  genesis  of  great  his- 
torical movements,  and  replies,  Not  by  taking  thought ;  in  crises  true 
policy  over-rides  compliance  and  compromise. 

But  with  so  wide  a  task  before  it  the  deepest  wisdom  is  essential.  How 
are  you  to  begin,  how  are  you  to  make  the  most  of  energies  that  are  not  yet 
fed  from  many  sources?  It  is  to  the  answer  of  these  question?  that  I  shall 
address  myself. 

The  working  class  has  been  valiantly  fighting  a  noble  battle  against  the 
sneers  and  opposition  of  all  mankind.  Cannot  the  Nationalists  lend  them  a 
hand?  I  have  noticed  how  certain  thrifty  workingmen  itch  for  the  conde- 
scending approval  and  friendship  of  their  social  superiors.  They  will  not 
join  labor  organizations  for  fear  of  the  cold  shoulder  from  this  quarter  and 
make  themselves  great  impediments  to  the  industrial  emancipation. 
Nationalists  can  imbue  these  laborers  with  social  insight  and  courage  by 
espousing  the  cause  of  the  Knights  of  Labor  and  every  similar  combina- 
tion. Going  on  beyond  the  useful  encouragement  of  others  in  good  works 
the  Nationalists  can  undertake  good  works  themselves.  AVorking  people 
without  number  are  but  the  property  of  their  employers,  a  sorry  state  of 
affairs  in  a  land  of  equality. 

The  health,  comfort,  development  of  these  hired  ones  is  nothing  to  the 
wage  payer.  As  many  hours  as  they  are  bought  for  must  they  be  on  the 
move,  whether  their  movements  serve  an  end  or  no.  Unless  the  server  is 
exhausting  himself  in  some  way,  the  master  thinks  himself  defrauded.  If 
an  artisan  can  do  his  work  as  well  or  better  sitting,  he  must  not  sit  for  ap- 
pearance's sake.  *  If  he  is  actually  tired  and  rests  he  is  pronounced  lazy. 

*  I  learned  this  by  experience  while  I  worked  in  a  Rubber  Factory  in  San  Francisco  I  was 
running  a  mill  and  a  part  of  the  time  while  wailing  for  the  material  to  mix  I  rested  upon  the  lever. 
One  day  the  foreman  came  to  me  and  said  he  had  rather  I  would  stand;  it  would  look  better. 


87. 

In  this  contract  of  salary  or  wages  for  hours  no  human  weakness  or  necessity 
is  respected.  The  health  of  a  mule  is  considered  ;  a  workman  is  jeered  and 
discharged  if  he  insists  upon  proper  conservation  of  his  health.  He  is 
dubbed  a  shirk.  If  he  is  working  in  poisons  he  must  not  wince  until  na- 
ture prostrates  him.  Young  working  women  are  being  steadily  unfitted  for 
motherhood,  because  the  employer  owns  them  for  nearly  half  the  day  and 
has  but  one  thought  regarding  them,  to  profit  the  utmost  from  that  owner- 
ship. It  is  damnable.  The  fact  cannot  be  quietly  spoken  of.  These  girls 
do  later  become  mothers  in  many  instances  and  they  bear  children  for  sick- 
ness, vice  and  crime.  They  have  no  stamina.  Their  employer  sucked 
away  their  virility  before  they  were  born  by  the  slow  merciless  radical  de- 
struction of  their  mothers.  He  thought  he  had  a  right  to  their  full  energy 
so  many  hours.  But  he  had  no  such  right,  and  when  some  able  champions 
of  the  weak,  of  justice,  of  the  integrity  of  humanity  arise,  the  power  to  thus 
desolate  will  be  speedily  and  completely  taken  from  him. 

A  society  like  the  Nationalists  can  rescue  them.  It  can  ascertain  what 
storekeepers  are  encroaching  on  the  principles  of  humanity  and  withdraw 
its  trade  from  them  and  advertise  their  heartlessness  to  the  community 
through  published  reports.  It  can  extend  this  system  of  investigation  to  all 
forms  of  industry,  to  shops  and  factories  and  railroads,  directly  or  indirectly 
withdrawing  its  patronage  when  possible,  and  in  all  cases  arousing  public 
indignation.  The  whole  intelligent  laboring  population  will  be  its  coadju- 
tors. Its  action  could  ruin  a  business,  as  a  business  deserves  ruin  if  its 
manager  derives  success  from  disregard  of  humanity  in  the  persons  of  his 
helpers.  With  this  power  behind  it  a  word  of  suggestion  or  warning  to  sel- 
fish firms  would  ensure  reform. 

At  the  present  time  working  people  have  no  efficient  champions.  Ma- 
chinery is  improperly  guarded  and  the  workman  daily  risks  his  life  and  per- 
haps is  finally  maimed  or  killed.  Consider  railroad  brakemen.  But  if  he, 
in  his  insignificant  capacity  of  workingman,  should  suggest  to  the  foreman 
or  employer* that  a  railing  should  be  here  and  a  shield  there,  he  would  meet 
a  look  of  astonishment  and  derision  and  be.  told  that  he  could  leave  if  he 
wished.  So  it  is  in  other  things.  The  mere  workingman  carries  no  weight. 
II »•  may  protest  and  it  ends  there,  unless  it  be  thought  desirable  to  punish 
him  with  dismissal.  He  is  so  dependent  and  powerless  that  he  usually 
•  lares  not  even  protest,  but  goes  on  doing  the  thing  that  he  knows  is  killing 


88 

him,  yet  having  no  power  to  escape,  no  friend  or  tribunal  to  appeal  to. 
What  difference  is  it  how  many  laboring  men  are  killed  off  ?  Are  there  not 
more  of  them  ?  A  workingman  always  knows  that  his  situation  hangs  by  a 
thread,  that  over  him  in  his  shop  life  the  manager  or  owner  is  despot.  The 
situation  is  a  cruel  one.  The  toiler  is  never  delivered  from  it.  The  preju- 
dices of  a  hot  tempered  boss  may  fall  on  him,  and  if  he  thinks  the  shop  has 
duties  to  him  it  is  positively  certain  to  fall  on  him. 

To  realize  the  case  put  an  educated  man  and  one  accustomed  to  gentle- 
manly treatment  in  this  environment.  He  would  feel  continually  outraged 
at  the  indignities  of  the  position,  at  the  cheap  estimate  put  upon  his  com- 
fort, his  health,  his  wishes.  You  say,  'Yes,  but  the  gentleman  has  been 
used  to  something  else  and  the  workingman  has  not,  and  therefore  does  not 
feel  the  harshness.  '  But  are  not  these  marks  of  respect  the  prerogatives 
of  every  man,  even  tho  he  works?  Far  beyond  the  insight  of  school  theo- 
rists is  Mr.  Ruskin's  observation  on  this  point.  "In  his  office  as  governor 
of  the  men  employed  by  him,  the  merchant  or  manufacturer  is  invested  with 
a  distinctly  paternal  authority  and  responsibility.  In  most  cases  a  youth 
entering  a  commercial  establishment  is  withdrawn  altogether  from  home  in- 
fluence ;  his  master  must  become  his  father,  else  he  has,  for  practical  and 
constant  help,  no  father  at  hand  :  in  all  cases  the  master's  authority,  to- 
gether with  the  general  tone  and  atmosphere  of  his  business,  and  the  char- 
acter of  the  men  with  whom  the  youth  is  compelled  in  the  course  of  it  to 
associate,  have  more  immediate  and  pressing  weight  than  the  home  influence, 
and  will  usually  neutralize  it  either  for  good  or  evil ;  so  that  the  only  means 
which  the  master  has  of  doing  justice  to  the  men  employed  by  him  is  to  ask 
himself  sternly  whether  he  is  dealing  with  such  subordinate  as  he  would 
with  his  own  son,  if  compelled  by  circumstances  to  take  such  a  position. 
Supposing  the  captain  of  a  frigate  saw  it  right,  or  were  by  any  chance 
obliged,  to  place  his  own  son  in  the  position  of  a  common  sailor ;  as  he 
would  then  treat  his  son  he  is  bound  always  to  treat  everyone  of  the  men 
under  him.  So,  also,  supposing  the  master  of  a  manufactory  saw  it  right, 
or  were  by  any  chance  obliged,  to  place  his  own  son  in  the  position  of  an 
ordinary  workman  ;  as  he  would  then  treat  his  own  son,  he  is  bound  always 
to  treat  every  one  of  his  men.  This  is  the  only  effective,  true,  or  practical 
Rule  which  can  be  given  on  this  point  of  political  economy.  " 

*     Unto  This  Last,  Essay  i. 


When  we  make  these  comparisons,  putting  people  of  a  higher  social 
scale,  wonted  to  respect,  in  the  position  of  the  workingmen,  we  see  how  de- 
graded their  condition  is.  So  they  need  champions  who  will  not  lose  their  live- 
lihood if  the  truth  is  said,  and  whose  voice  cannot  be  silenced.  Manifestly 
too  we  must  not  wait  for  the  workiugman  to  come  to  us  from  his  ten-hour 
prison  house — such  is  the  factory — with  his  wrongs.  His  spirit  is  too  far 
broken,  he  cannot  believe  in  disinterested  care  for  him.  We  must  go  our- 
selves and  ascertain  the  facts  of  his  dull  existence. 

We  can  at  once  advocate  the  eight- hour  day  for  labor.  When  the 
working  day  is  diminished  two  hours  so  much  time  and  energy  are  presented 
to  the  whole  laboring  class  in  which  to  learn  the  requisites  of  social  improv- 
ment  and  to  prepare  themselves  to  apply  them,  and  make  themselves  our 
allies.  It  is  beyond  description  inhuman  to  keep  men  and  women  ten 
hours  in  a  shop,  day  in  day  out  a  life  long.  The  most  of  the  work  that  is 
done  is  intolerably  monotonous.  The  air  is  bad.  the  room  is  dusty,  damp 
or  dark.  When  eight  hours  is  the  day  this  great  wage  population  will  be- 
come stronger  and  more  intelligent  helpers  in  the  reformation  we  seek  than 
is  possible  now,  overworked  as  they  are,  dispirited  and  without  leisure  to 
read  or  think  or  hear.  Does  a  workingman  have  a  summer  outing  ?  Does 
he  rest  for  a  few  days  in  the  winter?  Not  unless  the  shop  closes  and  then 
his  pay  stops  and  his  relaxing  period  becomes  one  of  cramped  anxiety. 
One  of  thriii  said  to  me,  '  A  workingman  is  treated  as  a  person  treats  an- 
other man's  horse. ' 

If  the  working  days  were  reduced  to  eight  hours  the  store-keeping  prob- 
lem would  be  simplified.  It  is  one  of  the  oddities  of  our  time  to  suppose 
that  stores  must  be  kept  open  so  many  hours.  At  present,  to  be  sure,  the 
ten-hour  artisan  has  no  day-light  hour  to  trade,  and  some  stores  wait  for 
him  in  the  evening.  What  a  life  the  clerks  of  such  establishments  lead ! 
But  there  need  be  no  evening  stores  if  the  wage  class  have  two  hours  of 
dayliirht  allowed  them.  We  must  also  learn  to  economize  life  by  more 
limited  hours  for  shopping.  Why,  for  the  conveniece  of  those  who  might 
like  to  trade  in  the  night,  are  not  the  stores  kept  open  all  night?  They  are 
now  kept  open  all  day  for  the  accommodation  of  people  who  have  no  system 
about  luiyini:  and  clerks  idle  about  waiting  for  the  fancy  of  customers  to 
eome  in,  or  show  goods  for  the  idle  enjoyment  of  the  "  shopper.  "  If  they 
knew  that  all  stores  opened  an  hour  later  in  the  morning  or  closed  one  hour 


90 

or  two  earlier  in  the  afternoon  they  could  adapt  themselves  to  the  new 
limits.  *  In  country  towns  and  small  cities  dry  goods  stores  and  others 
keep  their  doors  open  till  nine  o'clock  ;  in  great  towns  they  close  at  six  ;  it 
is  a  matter  of  custom  ;  why  should  they  not  close  at  four?  If  all  stores 
made  these  changes  none  would  suffer,  the  inter-relation  would  remain  pre- 
cisely what  it  is. 

Early  closing  would  be  a  relief  to  employers.  I  know  a  small  city 
where  all  dry  goods  merchants  banded  together  to  close  at  an  early  hour  in 
the  evening,  all  save  one  who  would  not  join,  and  he  defeated  the  sensible 
measure  and  kept  the  rest  at  their  posts  until  a  late  hour.  He  should  have 
lost  all  his  trade.  The  small  employer  is  often  more  a  victim  of  his  position 
than  even  his  clerks.  There  are  those  who  go  to  business  before  their  chil- 
dren are  up  and  return  after  they  are  abed.  Sir  John  Lubbock  has  been 
enumerating  the  pleasures  of  life  in  two  volumes.  When  we  apply  his 
chapters  to  wage  earners,  to  clerks,  to  the  mass  of  salaried  men  and  to  many 
employers  we  discern  that  few  people  to-day  are  permitted  to  live,  few  to 
taste  the  pleasures  of  existence.  The  duty  of  happiness,  the  happiness  of 
duty,  books,  friends,  time,  travel,  home,  science,  education,  ambition, 
wealth,  health,  love,  art,  poetry,  music,  nature,  the  troubles  of  life,  labor 
and  rest,  religion,  the  hope  of  progress,  the  destiny  of  man,  these  are  the 
subjects  he  presents,  but  to  the  majority  of  men  most  of  them,  in  the  form 
and  proportion  that  make  them  pleasures,  do  not  exist.  And  it  is  because 
no  people  have  yet  wisely  and  deliberately  willed  that  they  shall  exist. 

A  society  with  the  catholic  aims  of  the  Nationalists  must  perform  some 
of  the  work  that  would  naturally  fall  to  institutions  of  learning  in  a  more 
advanced  moral  state.  It  has  been  my  observation  of  the  colleges  and  uni- 
versities of  the  country  that  they  have  little  capacity  or  wish  to  develop 
original  men.  They  do  not  reach  out  to  fresh  realities.  To  make  a  man 
like  some  who  have  already  been  made  satisfies  them.  What  originality 
they  will  tolerate  is  not  the  originality  of  a  whole  brain  but  of  a  circum- 


*  There  might  be  some  severity  in  this  arrangement  for  those  who  ship  as  a  luxury.  A  Phila- 
delphia woman  informed  me  that  she  had  been  in  Wana-maker's  a  few  days  before  from  nine  in  the 
morning  till  live  at  night  without  vacation.  Wanamaker  has  a  res  aurant  as  well  as  a  bargain  conn 
ter,  which  renders  this  feat  possible  without  a  lunch  basket.  In  Philadelphia  there  are  vagrant 
stories  about  the  sales  girls  broken  down  in  this  great  emporium,  next  to  Benjamin  Franklin  the 
pride  of  the  city,  but  the  pleasure  shoppers  from  nine  to  five  have  no  more  to  do  with  this  than 
Wanamaker  hat«  himself. 


scribed  brain  area.  The  college  has  the  reputation  of  keeping  alive  ideals 
but  the  ideals  are  time-worn ;  they  have  not  reckoned  with  change  and 
progress.  But  morality,  we  begin  to  learn*,  is  progressive.  '  A  "new  con- 
science "  has  finally  spoken.  The  college  still  looks  backward.  For  re- 
creating the  world,  for  wide  minded  leadership  it  has  no  inspiration  and  no 
department.  Observing  the  routinary,  disciplinary,  departmental  tendency 
of  the  colleges  Mr.  Emerson  asked,  "  But  what  doth  such  a  school  to  form 
a  great  and  heroic  character?  What  abiding  Hope  can  it  inspire?  What 
Iieformer  will  it  nurse?  What  poet  will  it  breed  to  sing  to  the  human 
race  ?  What  discoverer  of  Nature's  laws  will  it  prompt  to  enrich  us  by  dis- 
closing  in  the  mind  the  statute  which  all  matter  must  obey  ?  What  fiery 
soul  will  it  send  out  to  warm  a  nation  with  his  charity?  What  tranquil 
mind  will  it  have  fortified  to  walk  with  meekness  in  private  and  obscure  du- 
iit>.  to  wait  and  to  suffer?  Is  it  not  manifest  that  our  academic  institutions 
should  ha\v  a  wider  scope  ;  that  they  should  not  be  timid  and  keep  the  ruts 
<>f  the  la>t  generation,  but  that  wise  men  thinking  for  themselves  and  heart- 
ily seeking  the  good  of  mankind,  and  counting  the  cost  of  innovation, 
should  dare  to  arouse  the  young  to  a  just  and  heroic  life;  that  the  moral 
nature  should  be  addressed  in  the  school-room,  and  children  should  be 
treated  as  the  high-born  candidates  of  truth  and  virtue?  "  * 

Hut  the  college  does  .fail  and  it  therefore  comes  to  be  the  duty  of  others 
to  supply  encouragement  to  the  higher  qualities.  It  is  curious  that  so  many 
men  should  pass  through  college  without  being  wakened  to  the  sense  of  any 
noble  mission,  it  is  altogether  unbearable  that  the  pure  and  heaven-born 
fire  of  so  many  should  be  put  out  there.  If  young  men  of  enthusiasm  are 
universally  told  that  they  are  dreamers,  how  many  will  come  forth  pre- 
served and  sound?  A  society  for  social  progress  must  find  such  spirits  out 
before  they  are  lost,  and  assure  them  that  the  world  needs  not  some  mechan- 
ical mental  capacity  that  the  schools  would  catch  at  and  countenance,  but 
them,  their  highest  sentiments,  their  stirring  and  noble  resolves,  and  it  must 
convince  them  that  somewhere  there  is  a  band  of  their  fellows  needing  them 
and  awaiting  the  impregnation  of  their  spirits.  My  friends,  when  such 
characters  walk  the  earth  more  plentifully  life  will  be  fresh  and  promising, 
and  you  and  1  shall  gain  courage  to  take  up  arms  against  wrong,  glad  in 


*      K  i  him/ inn. 


92 

the  confidence  that  victory,   daughter    of  wisdom   and  will,  is  with  us. 

In  a  cursory  review  of  the  powers  that  are  for  and  against  the  higher 
progress  one  cannot  leave  the  newspaper  altogether  unnoticed.  It  is  some- 
what remarkable  that  no  vigorous  class  of  people  has  yet  taken  effective 
exceptions  to  its  cheap  moral  sentiments  and  crass  standards  and  cowardice. 
The  press  represents  great  vested  interests  and  though  outwardly  formidable 
and  fearless  no  agency  is  more  timorous  and  fluctuating  at  heart.  Ijs  con- 
cern is  to  read  the  public  mind  before  it  formulates  its  own.  This  is  not  a 
high  mission,  but  it  renders  the  press  swiftly  sensitive  to  new  demands  from 
the  community.  There  will  soon  enough  be  papers  discovering  and  adopt- 
ing the  principles  that  a  body  of  citizens  has  adopted.  Because  of  its  vested 
interests  the  newspaper  is  by  nature  the  friend  and  supporter  of  vested  in- 
terests in  general.  It  opens  to  advancing  ideas  reluctantly,  wishing  to  move 
with  the  powers  that  purchase.  Under  the  combined  requirements  of  Na- 
tionalists and  Proletarians  the  press  will  speedily  find  unanswerable  reasons 
for  joining  them,  when  the  extent  to  which  it  is  always  a  trembling  and 
calculating  suppliant  for  favor,  masked  in  boldness  and  noise,  will  become 
manifest. 

In  the  newspaper  the  vice  of  one  man  power,  the  plant  owner's  dicta- 
torship, appears  in  notable  measure.  This  single  man  is  autocrat  and  the 
rest  puppets.  The  rudder  of  a  newspaper's  policy  is  the  business  depart- 
ment. Public  opinion  is  to  be  enlightened?  Yes,  in  the  way  that  will  most 
swell  the  profits  of  the  proprietor.  The  working  staff  are  pawns.  Some  of 
the  hardest  worked  men  are  newspaper  men,  but  they  have  poor  pay  and 
less  thanks.  One  of  the  things  yet  to  be  acceptably  explained  is  why  these 
men  should  toil  so  and  be  mental  and  moral  slaves  for  the  financial  bene- 
fit of  a  single  man  or  stock  company.  Still  worse  is  it  when  we  reflect  upon 
the  quality  and  character  of  the  man  who  may  at  any  time  control  this  in- 
fluence. Then  we  see  how  perfectly  inadequate  to  the  progressive  needs  of 
humanity  is  the  system  that  places  unlimited  power  in  the  hands  of  the 
owner  of  anything.  Here  again,  as  at  every  step  in  the  review  of  present 
industry,  the  question  arises  why  newspaper  men  below  proprietors  have  not 
combined  to  assert  and  protect  their  rights  and  interests.  Surely  if  any 
can  promote  this  combination  it  will  aid  to  emancipate  many  earnest  and  in- 
dustrious men  from  a  tyranny  that  renders  manhood  impossible  and  foists 
upon  the  public  anaemic  and  manufactured  opinions. 


93 

It  has  been  the  whim  of  those  who  dreamed  of  a  better  human  society 
to  go  out  from  their  fellows  and  to  colonize  alone.  There  is  loss  in  this 
method,  if  also  some  gain  ;  the  truer  procedure  is  to  form  a  nucleus  of  col- 
onization within  society  itself  and  thence  to  leaven  the  lump.  The  Na- 
tionalist Association  is  from  its  principles  such  a  nucleus.  If  some  things 
can  but  be  actually  done  and  with  no  compulsion  of  law  or  organization,  but 
through  the  impulse  of  a  higher  thought  in  the  individual,  the  change  of 
social  system  is  begun.  Why  not  inaugurate  Nationalism  among  National- 
ists, exchanging  services  on  the  new  principles  within  the  group?  What 
relief  to  escape  the  voracity  of  competition,  even  in  some  relations! 

But  I  exceed  the  limits  of  time  and  a  few  words  will  express  my  closing 
thought.  There  is  now  an  opportunity  to  give  an  impetus  to  reforms  that 
start  at  the  bottom.  In  the  struggle  between  labor  and  capital  something 
of  a  crisis  has  come.  Great  bodies  of  workingmen  in  all  parts  of  the  world 
are  making  a  stand  for  an  eight-hour  day  and  for  higher  wages.  Capital 
does  not  readily  comply.  A  despatch  from  Pittsburg  announces  that  the 
leading  railroads  running  into  that  city  have  decided  not  to  recognize  the 
Federation  of  Railroad  Employes,  or  any  general  committees,  but  each  com- 
pany will  treat  only  with  such  men  as  are  in  its  employ.  *  The  working- 
iiu-ii  are  everywhere  nobly  fighting  their  own  battle  with  their  own  funds. 
Hut  it  is  not  their  battle  alone,  it  is  the  struggle  for  a  higher  society  they 
are  prosecuting,  it  is  the  cause  of  every  just  man,  and  supremely  it  is  the 
cause  of  the  Nationalists.  Every  dollar  that  is  contributed  to  their  efforts 
aids  this  cause.  Every  voice  that  is  raised  to  say,  '  You  are  in  the  right,' 
hastens  the  victory.  I  therefore  do  not  understand  why  the  working  people 
are  permitted  to  bear  the  burden  and  the  heat  of  this  contest  unsupported, 
while  we  look  idly  or  critically  on.  We  can  raise  money  to  sustain  their 
strikes,  we  can  publicly  declare  ourselves  on  their  side,  we  can  prove  that 
it  is  not  a  selfish  class  warfare  they  are  engaged  in,  but  one  that  enlists  those 
who  are  not  of  their  class.  In  this  way  we  shall  alter  public  opinion  on  the 
labor  probK-in  and  unite  two  great  camps  that  ought  to  be  fighting 

*  The  New  York  Tribune  has  the  following :— "Portland,  Ore.,  April  17.— "About  500  union  car- 
penters wero  discharged  yesterday  in  accordance  with  a  resolution  adopted  by  the  Builders'  Ex- 
c.hiiiige  A  contractor  ban  employed  a  non-union  carpenter  and  the  union  men  threatened  to  strike 
if  In-  wa««  ii'»t  discharged.  It  was  decided  by  the  builders  to  discharge  the  union  men  in  anticipation 
of  a  strike  iu  May." 


94 

together  in  this  crusade  for  industrial  liberty,  the  wage  and  middle  classes. 
It  was  the  moral  and  physical  support  that  came  from  without  the  laborers' 
ranks  that  made  the  London  dockmen's  strike  peculiarly  successful  and  in- 
structive. But  the  spirit  in  which  we  may  suspect  some  of  this  aid  was 
given  is  not  the  spirit  that  I  commend  to  you  or  that  you  have.  The  pow- 
erful leader  of  English  labor,  Mr.  John  Burns,  said,  '  I  look  upon  the  con- 
cession that  the  Emperor  of  Germany  has  been  making  to  the  Democracy  in 
the  same  light  as  I  view  the  charitable  contributions  of  wealthy  Englishmen 
to  the  dock  strikers,  as  merely  a  sop  to  Cerberus,  '  If  the  object  of  these 
contributors  was  to  quiet  the  minds  of  the  working  people  with  temporary 
generosity  but  with  no  fixed  purpose  to  work  a  revolution  in  their  condition, 
their  object  is  not  ours.  And  the  thing  that  will  give  unprecedented  weight 
to  whatever  we  do  when  we  learn  the  secret  of  strength,  is  this  fact  that  we 
are  serving  no  ulterior  and  selfish  aim  of  our  own  in  what  we  attempt,  that 
we  are  not  seeking  to  sustain  a  position  for  ourselves  at  the  cost  of  a  posi- 
tion to  others,  that  our  idea  of  reform  is  not  an  occasional  handful  of  cop- 
pers to  our  toiling  brothers  while  we  still  ride  on  their  backs,  but  that  we 
are  pledged  to  an  order  of  things  in  which  we  walk  and  work  side  by  side, 
bearing  burdens  according  to  our  strength  and  sharing  rewards  justly. 


Fragments  and  Random  Letters. 


I.     A  DEFENSE  OF   STRIKES.    * 

During  the  New  York  Central  strike  I  prepared  and  circulated  the  fol- 
lowing subscription  paper  : 

"Believing  that  the  day  of  oppression  of  the  laboring  man  must  be 
brought  to  an  end,  that  the  New  York  Central  railroad  strikers  are  justly 
fighting  to  terminate  this  oppression,  that  their  battle  is  the  battle  equally 
of  all  workiugmen  and  of  all  high-minded  citizens,  that  it  is  therefore  the 
duty  of  the  general  public  to  sustain  them  in  their  unequal  struggle,  and 
hoping  that  these  interruptions  of  travel  and  traffic  may  lead  to  the  early 
assumption  and  management  of  the  railroads  by  the  State,  we  subscribe  .in 
support  of  this  strike.  " 


95 

This  called  from  a  sympathizer  with  the  working  class  the  query  con- 
cerning the  methods  of  the  strikers  :  "I  cannot  understand  how  they  ex- 
pect to  gain  anything  from  their  persistent  efforts  to  injure  others.  " 

This,  I  imagine,  is  the  feeling  of  many  who  have  a  warm  love  for  their 
fellows. 

The  following  consideration  should  make  them  supporters  of  strikers. 

1.  Striking  is  the  only  way  the  working  people  have  to  awaken  the 
country  to  the  sadness  and  wrong  of  their  situation. 

2.  Those  who    inaugurated  the   industrial  war  implied  in  the  strike 
were  not  the  strikers,  but  their  employers,   who  have  been  on  a  perpetual 
strike  against  the  working  classes,  the  method  of  their  strike  being  payment 
only  of  such  wages  as  competition  among  the  working  people  forced  them  to 
accept.     The  working   people   under  compulsion   finally   adopted  the  same 
weapon,  and  in  self-defense,    struck  in  return,   their  method  of  using  the 
weapon   hciiiL!  to   refuse  to   work  for  those  who  only  paid  them  competition 
w  a  ires. 

My  complaint  airainst  the  working  people  is  that  they  did  not  begin  to 
strike  sooner,  and  that  they  do  not  organize  themselves  so  as  to  strike  with  a 
thousand-fold  more  effect.  The  capitalists  are  not  friends  of  the  working 
people,  and  it  seems  time  to  drop  the  pretense  that  they  are.  A  great 
strike  that  would  paralyze  the  business  of  the  country  should  show  the  com- 
fortable that  the  masses  will  toil  for  them  and  suffer  for  them  no  more,  and 
I  would  welcome  such  a  strike. 

I.      SHALL  WE   BELIEVE  IN  COLLEGE  PROFESSORS? 

The  proclamation  of  the  Rev.  Prof.  N.  J.  Morrison,  of  Marietta  Col- 
lege, against  the  Golden  Rule  and  the  anarchy  of  its  teachings  has  caused 
me  to  think  hack  over  my  college  days  to  explain,  if  I  could,  the  mental 
attitude  of  this  gentleman.  I  shall  have  to  confess  that  hardly  anyone  in 
the  institutions  that  I  have  known  was  aware  of  the  social  movement  that 
is  Lio'mu-  on  in  the  world.  One  has  to  learn  all  about  life  after  he  goes  away 
from  college.  I  can  honestly  say  of  most  of  the  professors  that  my  experi- 
ence compels  me  to  think  of  them  as  the  blind  leading  the  blind.  The 


Thi-i  and  Mi  •  I'ollowinir  letter  were   published  in  the  CMnciuuati 


96 

majority  of  them  are  merely  busy  teaching  lessons  to  boys ;  a  few  others  are 
devoted  to  what  is  called  original  research  ;  but  all  seem  unconscious  that 
the  supreme  need  of  the  people  is  to  know  how  to  live,  and  that  a  professor 
should  have  something  sound  to  say  about  that,  or  he  had  better  seek  a  field 
where  his  deficiency  in  the  chief  matter  of  his  calling  will  not  do  so  much 
harm. 

I  do  not  blame  Prof.  Morrison  so  much  as  others  more  favorably  sit- 
uated. The  wave  of  social  interest  has  not  yet  reached  many  of  the  Ohio 
towns,  when  our  largest  seaboard  institutions,  Yale,  Johns  Hopkins,  Har- 
vard, are  so  radically  deficient  and  so  far  behind  English  universities  in  this 
matter.  But  after  all  it  is  hard  to  think  that  men  who  do  not  comprehend 
the  most  significant  intellectual  and  moral  movements  of  our  century,  should 
be  at  work  in  what  is  called  the  field  of  higher  education.  I  would  like  to 
see  a  university  whose  work  should  be  to  show  people  how  to  live.  "An- 
ticipation, hope,  and  disappointment!  "  says  a  celebrated  modern  writer, 
summing  up  life.  Who  can  hope  for  us  anything  but  disappointment  when 
we  grow  up  by  chance?  We  go  to  the  schools  to  be  educated,  but  they  have 
no  important  teaching  for  us.  We  are  still  left  to  grow  up  by  chance,  for 
none  of  those  who  are  there  have  any  light  to  impart.  Life — education. 
They  are  now  divorced.  The  professor  with  his  information  and  book  mor- 
ality is  the  last  person  to  be  able  to  tell  us  how  to  live  without  disappoint- 
ment. 

3.   "DREAMS." 

"  To  a  small  girl-child,  who  may  yet  *live  to  grasp  somewhat  of  that 
which  for  us  is  yet  sight,  not  touch,  "  Olive  Schreiner  dedicates  a  great  book 
called  "Dreams."  It  is  not  a  long  book  but  some  who  read  it  will  be 

changed  and  new-born.     It  is  a  bird  from  the  land  of  Freedom,  wonderfully 

• 
assuring  us  that  Freedom  is  our  own  destiny. 

A  mother  slept  and  strange  shapes  came  and  would  touch  the  spot 
where  the  child  lay  that  was  yet  to  be  born.  Health,  Wealth,  Fame, 
Love,  Talent,  came,  each  to  give  the  child  its  own  dower,  but  the 
mother  refused.  Then  came  one  that  promised  not  any  of  these,  but  failure. 
And  the  mother  said  "Touch.  " 

"  And  he  leaned  forward  and  laid  his  hand  upon  the  sleeper,  and  whis- 


97 

pered  to  it,  smiling  ;  and  this  only  she  heard — '  This  shall  be   thy  reward- 
that  the  ideal  shall  be  real  to  theeS 

And  the  child  trembled  ;but  the  mother  slept  on  heavily  and  her  brain 
picture  vanished.  But  deep  within  her  the  antenatal  thing  that  lay  here 
had  a  dream.  In  those  eyes  that  had  never  seen  the  day,  in  that  half- 
shaped  brain  was  a  sensation  of  light !  Light — that  it  had  never  seen. 
Light — that  perhaps  it  never  should  see.  Light — that  existed  somewhere! 

And  already  it  had  its  reward  :     The  Ideal  was  real  to  it.  " 

When  I  read  this  book  I  too  had  a  dream.  I  saw  many  persons  and  no 
cloud  of  care  or  weariness  on  any  face.  The  Restraints  of  life  were  gone. 
They  were  of  all  ages,  but  all  were  beautiful  and  all  were  happy.  They  , 
seemed  to  fill  the  world.  Then  a  film  fell  from  my  eyes  and  I  saw  that 
these  chosen  ones  moved  among  innumerable  others  who  were  one  and  all 
clad  in  the  garment  of  Restraint.  But  the  chosen  were  not  harmed  for 
tin  y  did  ever  their  own  will,  and  the  customs  of  the  rest  were  to  them  as  if 
they  did  not  exist. 

A  woman  came  and  sat  down  by  me,  and  I  said,  "  Is  not  the  crowd 
angry  with  these  fearless  ones?"  "At  first,"  she  said,  "it  was  angry 
and  tried  to  destroy  them.  Then  it  became  envious,  perceiving  that  they 
only  are  the  truly  happy. 

"  By  what  laws  are  they  governed?"     I  said. 

"  By  no  laws,  "  she  said.  "  The  nature  of  each  is  his  law,  and  none 
question  or  inquire  about  this  law  save  from  curiosity  and  to  become  more 
enlightened.  " 

"  Do  the  laws  of  dill'erent  natures  never  conflict?  "  I  asked. 

Said  she,  "  All  love  and  respect  one  another  and  the  principle  of  Free- 
dom too  well  to  have  conflict." 

1  pondered  a  while  and  then  said,  •'  Was  this  happy  life  not  hard  to 
introduce  ?  " 

She  replied,  smiling,  "It  was  easy.  One  person  did  it  first,  declining 
to  live  by  the  law  of  custom  and  altogether  desipising  it.  Then  followed 
<>thei>.  and  you  see  how  many  there  are  now. 

I  was  atrnin  silent. 

Then  I  asked,  '<  Is  this  the   Future?  " 

"No,  "  she  said,  "it  is  the  Present.  " 

I  awoke.  The  air  was  fresher  than  1  had  ever  breathed.  I  thought  I 
•  ••mid  hear  the  stars 


98 


4.     SOCIAL    RESPONSIBILITIES.  * 

The  time  has  come  when  the  intelligence  and  morality  of  communities 
must  act,  or  pay  dearly  for  their  inaction.  Unless  wrongs  are  righted, 
wrongs  perpetrated  by  society  upon  its  wage-earning  class,  by  the  selfish 
rich,  whose  millions  have  often  been  acquired  by  dishonor  and  extortion, 
against  the  defenseless  poor,  who  shall  blame  the  oppressed  for  rising 
against  their  tyrants?  If  we  persist  in  our  inhumanity  toward  them  they 
were  indeed  despicable  if  they  did  not  prepare  to  cast  off  our  yoke.  And 
in  this  mighty  crisis  what  of  the  moral  forces  on  which  we  are  wont  to  rely  ? 
The  church  resounds  with  elegant  essays  ;  we  of  the  universities  debate 
warmly  over  a  Latin  clause  and  hold  up  to  admiration  the  heroes  of 
Thermopylae,  but  there  is  little  heroism  in  us.  Ah  yes!  At  this  moment  we 
are  cowards. 

Something  a  little  more  sinewy  than  the  Sunday  School  and  Bethel 
spirit  is  needed  in  reformers  of  our  day.  There  is  no  call  for  people  who 
go  among  the  poor  to  soothe  them,  and  to  convince  them  that  the  rich  who 
stand  afar  off  are  their  friends  ;  friends  do  not  stand  afar  off,  friends  do 
not  pay  starvation  wages.  Pitiable  is  the  person  who  goes  to  the  poor  thus 
to  mollify  them  and  to  dissuade  them  from  energetic  deeds.  Sterner  work 
waits.  The  missionary  who  would  save  himself  from  the  sore  humiliation  of 
having  his  labors  go  to  preserve  to  the  heartless  rich  their  elegance  and  aris- 
tocratic powers,  who  would  see  his  efforts  tell  for  real  progress,  must  under- 
stand the  economic  and  social  measures  by  means  of  which  a  just  income 
shall  be  secured  to  every  laboring  man.  Knowledge  of  these  measures  ht 
must  unweariedly  teach,  and  he  must  arouse  in  his  hearers  the  spirit  to  exe- 
cute them.  Shall  the  stunting  of  children  and  the  withering  of  all  the 
manhood  and  womanhood  of  adults  in  shops  and  factories  go  on?  Shall  the 
dire  curse  of  the  tenement  house  that  the  rent  of  the  owner  may  be  fat  con- 
tinue much  longer  ?  Shall  the  situations  and  therefore  the  prosperity  and 
independence  and  happiness  of  men  who  work  for  wages  be  forever  at  the 
whim  of  an  irresponsible  owing  employer?  Shall  unrestricted  rnonopo-lies 

*    From  an  address  before  the  Woman's  Industrial  Union  of  San  Francisco. 


99 

suck  the  life  out  of  whole  communities  that  railroad  magnates  and  trust 
manipulators  may  live  in  palaces  and  vie  in  vulgar,  enervating  opulence  ? 
Not  if  there  are  even  a  few  persons  of  feeling  and  decision  alive. 

Look  about  you  and  observe  how  the  great  fortunes  have  been,  and  are 
being,  made.  Note  how  morality  has  died  out  of  the  making  and  out  of  the 
using  of  them.  A  few  reap  the  benefits  of  civilization,  the  majority  are 
slaves  and  savages.  Wealth  breeds  wealth  almost  without  toil.  But  this 
is  social  wealth  and  those  who  privately  get  it  have  no  real  and  rightful 
claims  to  it.  Ours  is  the  era  when  the  few  who  possess  the  land  and  in- 
struments of  production  drain  and  sap  the  very  blood  of  their  fellows  in  the 
labor  required  of  them,  and  in  return  for  it  all  give  them  less  than  enough 
to  sustain  life  properly.  My  friends,  this  is  infamous.  Do  our  statesmen 
turn  their  attention  to  the  terrible  social  evils?  Far  from  it ;  they  are 
themselves  mainly  the  rich,  or  they  are  statesmen  for  the  purpose  of  becom- 
ing rich.  Does  labor  have  a  fair  hearing  anywhere?  Never.  The  two 
political  parties  bid  for  the  labor  vote  and  care  not  a  fig  for  the  voters  there- 
after. And  yet  grand  and  glorious,  better  I  assure  you,  infinitely  better  than 
plundering  the  community  in  the  respectable  guise  of  business,  than  becom- 
ing richer  by  making  girls  work  an  half  hour  more  in  the  factory,  or  men  an 
extra  hour  on  the  railroad  or  cable  car, -is  the  earning  one's  daily  bread  by 
the  labor  of  one's  hands.  Do  you  wonder  that  the  working  classes  say  that 
.this  system  of  ours  is  doomed?  I  do  not.  lam  wholly  with  them  in  say - 
ini?  it. 

5.      THE   EDUCATED    MAN.  * 

How  do  these  matters  of  social  reconstruction  concern  us  as  educated 
men  V  Perhaps  closer  than  any  other  class.  We  are  privileged  persons. 
Only  a  few  have  our  opportunities.  While  we  study  here  and  there  and 
have  our  leisure,  somebody  is  digging  the  ground  from  ten  to  fifteen  hours 
daily  to  grow  the  food  we  are  eating;  quite  a  number  more  prepare  this  food, 
mid  weave  and  stitch  our  clothes,  and  get  in  readiness  the  divers  things  we 
use.  We  are  undoubtedly  privileged  persons.  There  are  a  great  many 
who  eaimot  have  these  privileges  though  they  may  intensely  crave  them 

*     From  an  addroHK  before  the  Student's  Association  of  the  University  of  California.  1889. 


100 

and  be  more  capable  and  deserving  than  we.  What  is  it  that  singles  us 
out  for  favor  ?  We  have  a  chance  to  reflect  and  are  taught  how  to  reflect. 
We  have  not  to  go  and  hew  the  stones  for  our  mental  structure  out  of  the 
resisting  mountain;  they  are  brought  to  us  polished  off,  and  shaped  to  our 
need,  shaped  sometimes  too  well.  We  are  judges.  We  view  the  past  with 
serenity ;  we  look  out  upon  the  present  passionless,  still  free,  still  free. 
Pause  a  moment.  What  is  it  to  be  uncommitted?  Outside  the  struggle 
rages.  Other  men  are  born  to  sides,  predestined  by  circumstance  to  hold 
their  views.  They  never  looked  but  in  one  direction.  This  man's  father 
was  a  storekeeper  ;  from  youth  he  has  seen  with  his  father's  eyes  whom  he 
followed.  Here  is  the  son  of  a  manufacturer,  here  of  a  Republican,  of  a 
Democrat — we  know  their  bent.  But  the  collegian !  He  has  time  to  re- 
vise himself.  He  looks  out  on  the  struggle  ;  does  it  please  him  ?  Can  he 
become  a  partisan?  Can  he  be  clay  to  the  industrial  requirements?  The 
men  down  there  who  are  bleeding  from  the  wounds  of  their  fellows  and  deal- 
ing them  lustily,  probably  never  knew  that  there  are  two  reasonable  sides, 
and  a  third  middle  place  still  more  reasonable.  They  never  vie  wed  the  field 
from  an  eminence,  for  the  university  is  an  eminence.  Looking  from  this 
height  and  enlightened  by  plentiful  rays  from  the  past,  we  cannot  see  the 
scene  as  the  combatants  do.  We  cannot  take  sides  by  lot  and  hotly  storm 
the  casual  enemy.  Our  friends  are  on  both  sides,  our  enemies  are  on  both 
sides.  In  a  word  the  educated  man  is  from  necessity  the  seer,  and  if  not  he 
is  no  true  son  of  his  environment, 

AVhat  then  shall  he  do?  He  shall  ponder  these  questions  :  whether  to 
go  into  life  accepting  things  as  he  inherits  them,  looking  about  for  the  best 
place  there  is  and  making  for  it,  seeing  that  he  says  what  people  want  him 
to  say  and  getting  well  paid  therefor,  sagaciously  keeping  his  conscience 
wherexit  will  not  interfere  with  his  prospects  ;  whether  to  be  a  time-server 
then  and,  under  the  irreproachable  guise  of  a  lawyer's  fee,  an  editor's  salary 
or  a  flattering  office  of  corporate  influence,  to  sell  himself  to  the  best  bid- 
der ;  whether  to  enter  the  melee  and  bear  away  as  many  golden  bags  as  he 
can,  a  get-penny. 

It  is  said  now  that  the  brains  of  the  land  go  where  the  money  beckons 
and  do  what  the  money  bids  them.  I  will  not  take  side  on  this  point.  But 
it  is  a  pertinent  question  what  educated  men  are  doing  in  this  hour  of  in- 
comparable issues  and  why  such  things  are  said  of  them.  I  know  not 
accurately  if  the  university  is  up  to  its  great  duty.  Perhaps  Tolstoi  was 


101 

right  in  saying,  "  It  always  seems  to  those  who  claim  at  any  given  period 
to  be  the  representatives  of  science  and  art,  that  they  have  performed  and 
are  performing,  and — most  of  all — that  they  will  presently  perform,  the 
most  amazing  marvels,  and  that  beside  them  there  never  has  been  and  there 
is  not  any  science  or  any  art.  Thus  it  seemed  to  the  sophists,  the  scholas- 
tics, the  alchemists,  the  cabalists,  the  talmundists  ;  and  thus  it  seems  to  our 
own  scientific  science,  and  to  our  art.  "  *  And  possibly  he  divined  truly 
in  speaking  of  the  university  as  "an  establishment  where,  apparently,  they 
manufacture  the  learned  man  or  the  artist  (but  in  point  of  fact  they  manu- 
facture destroyers  of  science  and  art,)  who  receives  a  diploma  and  a  certifi- 
cate, who  would  be  glad  not  to  think  and  not  to  express  that  which  is 

imposed  on  his  soul, "  f 

I  do  at  least  know  this,  that  there  are  educated  men  who  have  broken 
internally  with  the  system  of  corruption  and  wrong  in  which  we  live  but 
who  timorously  say  it  would  cost  them  their  business  and  standing  to  expose 
their  minds.  Whose  duty  is  it,  I  pray  you,  to  set  these  wrongs  right? 
Whose  if  not  that  of  the  man  who  sees  the  wrongs?  And  whatever  the  cost 
may  be  it  is  his  duty.  Verestchagin  has  a  painting  named  "  A  Crucifixion 
under  the  Romans.  "  He  describes  it  somewhat  as  follows  :  "The  sky  is 
overcast  by  heavy  black  clouds.  Just  outside  the  walls  of  Jerusalem,  on  a 
small  rock,  are  erected  three  crosses,  all  of  the  same  size,  shape  and  appear- 
ance. The  figures  on  the  two  sides  are  of  a  vulgar  type  and  of  coarse  build, 
while  the  central  figure  is  of  a  more  refined  form.  His  face  is  not  seen  ;  it  is 
hid  by  long  auburn  hair  that  hangs  over  it ;  long  hair  indicates  that  the  cruci- 
iicd  was  a  man  who  dedicated  himself  to  Gcd.  " '  In  one  corner  of  the  pic- 
ture is  a  woman  weeping  bitterly,  presumably  the  mother  of  one  of  the  cruci- 
fied men.  Her  face  cannot  be  seen,  but  her  sorrow  must  be  great  indeed, 
and  none  of  the  women  surrounding  her  seem  likely  to  be  able  to  console  her. 
Many  a  time,  probably,  had  she  tried  to  avert  her  son  from  his  chosen 
course,  but  all  in  vain,  and  now  his  time  has  come.  "  What  do  we  owe 
to  this  man  for  refusing  to  be  averted  from  his  chosen  course?  But  had  he 
lived  to-day  and  attended  the  modern  universities,  he  might  have  learned  to 
put  a  check  on  his  enthusiasm  for  the  race,  he  might  have  been  taught  to 


"What  to  Do?"  p.  208. 
The  Same.  p.  22*. 


102 

criticise  the  lives  of  other  great  men  according  to  comparative  literary 
canons,  but  it  is  likely  that  his  time  would  never  have  come.  And  I  sup- 
pose the  universities  have  leveled  for  us  more  than  one  grand  moral  purpose. 
Let  us  not  exceed  bounds,  let  us  not  be  ridiculously  in  earnest,  let  us  coolly 
behold  our  fellow-men  dying  in  damnable  dens  for  the  want  of  work  or  just 
wages,  while  we  seek  an  introduction  to  the  families  of  the  personages 
who  use  them  so,  that  we  may  be  invited  to  their  princely  receptions. 
For  is  it  not  our  right?  Are  we  not  educated?  And  we  will  prepare  a 
theory  for  them,  showing  that  these  people  in  the  garrets  do  not  starve  from 
any  fault  of  theirs,  but  because  Evolution  is  a  just  God.  Yes,  our  function 
as  educated  men  is  glorious  and  indispensable.  And  if  we  cultivate  the 
graces  we  shall  be  able  to  marry  rich  and  shine  as  consummations  of  human 
progress.  I  counsel  you  all  to  do  it,  for  of  such,  peradventure,  is  the  Em- 
pire of  the  Nineteenth  Century  University.  With  tact  and  reticence  and 
supple  knees  we  may  win  the  smiles  and  patronage  of  the  present  kings  of 
the  world.  I  have  read  lately  the  description  of  one  of  them.  'He  is  sev- 
eral times  a  millionaire.  '  His  residence  in  Minneapolis" — so  runs  the 
narrative —  "  is  the  largest,  and  is  said  to  be  the  finest,  of  any  in  the  west- 
ern country.  It  is  built  of  magnificent  Minnesota  stone,  four  stories  high, 
and  resembles  more  a  palace  than  an  American  residence.  He  is  another 
of  the  long  list  of  millionaires  who  will  take  seats  upon  the  Republican 
side  of  the  Senate.  It  is  said  that  his  election  cost  him  upward  of  $250,- 

000 He  employs  hundreds  of  workmen  in  his  mills,  and  has  done   much 

in  that  section  of  the  country  to  break  down  the  organization  of  the  Knights 
of  Labor.  He  is  a  cold,  haughty,  aristocratic,  selfish  man.  He  has  built 
and  wrecked  several  railroads,  but  always  came  out  on  top,  while  his  vic- 
tims went  empty  handed As  an  illustration  of  his  wealth,  and  disposition 

to  spend  it  in  a  social  way,  last  November  his  only  daughter  was  introduced 
into  society  at  her  home  in  Minneapolis.  It  was  the  most  fashionable  event 
that  ever  occurred  in  that  marvellous  young  city.  There  were  over  1000 
guests  and  it  was  said  at  the  time  that  it  was  a  reception  which  cost  upward 
of  $30,000.  " 

Yes,  this  world  is  after  all  kind  and  sweet  to  a  few  of  us.  Let  us  join 
the  few  if  we  can  and  gladly  enjoy  the  day,  for  soon  the  sun  sets.  And 
outside  will  stand  duty,  but  we  will  close  the  doors  upon  her.  She  will 
knock  to  tell  us  that  nobility  and  transcending  beauty  and  freedom  are 


103 

there  with  her,  but  we  will  drink  the  wine  of  comfort  and  bar  her  entrance. 
And  by  degrees  we  shall  learn  that  we  wedded  death  instead  of  life,  our  out- 
ward good  fortune  will  bring  no  good  cheer  to  the  decaying  soul.  To  us  as 
educated  men  much,  infinitely  much,  was  given  ;  but  the  gift  was  mis- 
placed. It  was  a  mistake  to  expect  anything  strong  and  admirable  of  us. 


The  Awakened  Farmers.  * 


It  is  a  mistake  of  the  American  people  to  think  they  have  departed  far 
from  European  traditions.  Our  revolution  freed  our  purses  from  English 
taxation,  but  it  did  not  free  our  minds  from  English  ideas.  We  inherited 
our  instinct  to,  be  money-worshippers,  to  care  very  much  for  appearances, 
and  to  think  very  highly  of  forms  and  formalities,  for  these  are  all  English 
traits.  \Vi>  came  over  determined  to  be  free  from  rank,  but  after  all  we  let 
rank  and  aristocracy  in,  and  we  have  our  chosen  and  graded  circles  quite  as 
if  we  called  one  "  her  majesty  "  and  a  few  "  his  grace.  "  'We  are  not  a 
democratic  country  and  popular  happiness  is  no  greater  than  it  is  in  Eng- 
land. 

When  we  began  our  career  as  a  people  we  thought  we  had  great  things 
ahead.  'Flic  vast  land  acreage  seemed  to  promise  that  by  no  possible  al- 
chemy could  the  soil  ever  <ro  out  of  the  handsof  its  tillers,  and  these  immeas- 
urable diameters  of  the  land  offered  prosperous  homes  to  countless  of  the 
earth's  children.  This  was  not  to  be  so.  While  the  world  teemed  with 
plentv  the  life  of  the  worker  of  the  ground  was  to  become  hard  and  cramped. 
Poverty  was  to  sit  like  a  spectre  before  him  and  finally  to  swallow  up  house 
and  lands  and  himself.  That  is  the  deplorable  condition  of  the  farmer  to- 
dav.  He  is  beset  by  mortgages  and  the  certain  loss  of  what  he  owns.  The 
official  records  show  farm  mortgages  in  the  various  states  as  follows  :  t 


*     An  ?«l«lrct>8  to  Ashtabula  Farmers,  Jan.  20,  1891 

t    WaHhintfon  (Jlinulfn,  "The  Embattled  Farmers,"  in  The  Forum,  November.  1890. 


104 

In  Ohio  "the  State  bureau  of  statistics  reported,  for  the  year  1888, 
391,640  mortgages  upon  real  estate,  and  the  amount  for  which  the  land  is 
mortgaged  is  stated  to  be  $330,999,000.  The  assessed  value  of  real  estate 
was  $1,220,262,000.  The  mortgage  indebtedness,  therefore,  was,  within  a 
fractioii,  one  third  the  value  of  the  whole  real  estate  of  Ohio.  "  Making 
what  allowance  is  necessary  for  undervaluation  in  assessment  the  proportion 
is  significant. 

"  The  total  number  of  real  estate  mortgages  in  Illinois  in  1887,  apart 
from  those  on  city  lots,  was  92,777,  for  the  amount  of  $142,400,000.  The 
over-due  interest  was  $4,919,754,  and  the  total  indebtedness  of  the  farmers, 
therefore,  was  $147,320,000.  "  Adding  to  these  the  mortgages  on  town 
lots  and  chattels,  '  the  total  mortgage  indebtedness  of  the  people  of  Illinois 
in  1887  was  $416,378,975.  ' 

In  a  district  of  Kansas  there  are  *  33  renters  of  farms,  no  unmortgaged 
farms,  and  26  mortgaged  ones,  with  a  debt  of  $24,702. '  "A  great  many 
have  had  to  borrow  interest  from  the  banks,  and  others  have  not  paid  in- 
terest for  two  years.  " 

Formerly  nearly  all  farmers  were  working  their  own  farms  or  expected 
soon  to  pay  for  them  from  the  profits  of  their  farming.  Now  there  are 
many  renters  and  the  number  of  tenant  farmers  is  increasing.  It  does 
not  look  as  if -a  farmer  could  very  soon  pay  for  his  farm  from  the  profits  of 
his  farm,  when  according  to  the  labor  bureau  of  Connecticut  uthe  average 
annual  reward  of  the  farm  proprietor  of  that  State,  for  his  expenditure  of 
muscle  and  brain,  is  $181.31,  while  the  average  annual  wages  of  the  ordi- 
nary hired  man  is  $386.36.  "  t  Many  of  the  farmers  have  gone  into  some 
mechanical  wage-work,  and  are  no  longer  independent  owners  of  anything, 
not  even  themselves. 

And  yet  this  is  not  a  poor  country.  The  New  York  World  has 
gathered  statistics  and  finds  that  •  the  United  States  is  the  richest  country  in 
the  world,  and  contains  more  millionaires  than  probably  all  the  nations 
of  Europe  together.  '  There  are  35  persons  owning  $1,085,000,000,  and 
three  of  these,  Rockefeller,  Astor  and  Gould,  own  together  $350,000,000. 
Says  the  World,  '  Only  an  earthquake  devastating  Manhattan  Island  could 
wipe  out  the  fortune  of  the  Astors,  which  is  one  of  real  estate  and  rents.  ' 

t    The  figures  are   taken  from    '-Western   Farm    Mortgages,''  a   paper  in   the  November  1890 
Forum  by  Daniel  Reaves  Goodloe. 


105 

'  Every  cent  of  Rockefeller's  money  has  been  made  within  a  few  years  in 
Standard  oil.  '  The  Connecticut  farmer  applies  his  brain  and  muscle  year 
after  year  for  an  annual  remuneration  of  $181.31,  while  in  a  few  years  Rocke- 
feller's accumulated  reward  is  $125,000,000.  I  believe  it  has  taken  about 
fifteen  years  for  Rockefeller  to  eke  out  this  fortune,  and  it  would  take  50,- 
000  Connecticut  farmers,  each  laboring  fifteen  years,  or  one  Connecticut 
farmer  laboring  750,000  years,  to  lay  by  the  same  sum.  In  other  words 
Rockefeller  gives  a  day's  service  on  condition  that  50,000  men  shall  serve 
him  a  day. 

It  is  not  very  strange  that  the  farmers  are  poor.  They  are  dupes  of 
the  commercial  system.  By  means  of  the  commercial  system  capitalists 
extract  enormous  toll  from  them.  In  simpler  language  the  capitalists  rob 
tin-in.  This  daily  robbing  is  carried  on  legally,  but  what  is  law?  It  is  a 
book  of  rules  written  down  by  the  rich  and  the  hirelings  of  the  rich — the 
lawyers — to  enable  them  to  rob  the  poor. 

I  f  a  man  does  not  get  what  he  earns,  but  somebody  else  gets  it,  he  is 
robbed.  The  fanner  does  not  get  what  he  earns  ;  let  us  consider  the  ma- 
chinery by  which  he  is  robbed. 

I.  The  farmer  is  robbed  by  the  railroad.  The  railroad  carries  the 
produce  of  the  farmer  to  market.  It  demands  high  freight  rates  for  this 
service.  When  these  high  rates  are  paid  but  little  profit  for  his  hard  year's 
labor  is  left  to  the  farmer.  He  has  been  shorn  of  his  earnings  by  the  rail- 
road. It  is  in  this  way  that  the  railroad  magnates,  Jay  Gould,  the  Van- 
derbilts,  Collis  Huntington,  Leland  Stanford,  Mrs.  Mark  Hopkins  and  the 
others,  become  prodigiously  rich  and  the  farmer  whom  they  have  shorn 
becomes  so  poor  that  at  length  his  very  farm  goes  into  the  hands  of  his 
robbers. 

The  remedy  is,  for  the  whole  people,  the  government,  to  take  the  rail- 
roads out  of  the  hands  of  these  private  toll-collectors,  and  to  carry  them  on 
for  the  good  of  all.  Then  the  grain  of  the  farmer  would  be  conveyed  to 
market  at  legitimate  rates;  those  working  the  railroads  would  be  paid  legiti- 
mate wages  for  a  day  of  proper  length  ;  and  if  there  remained  profits  they 
would  go  into  the  public  treasury  to  decrease  taxes  or  to  provide  general 
improvements  such  as  paved  country  roads,  as  there  are  in  Germany,  and 
the  like.  We  should  escape  the  burdensome  curse  of  Goulds  and  Vamler- 


106 

bilts,  and  millions  of  people  would  live  in  greater  comfort  and  security. 
II.  The  farmer  is  robbed  by  the  Trust.  The  trust  is  a  monopoly.  It 
is  a  combination  of  the  manufacturers  of  a  certain  article  to  determine  how 
much  shall  be  manufactured  and  what  price  shall  be  charged.  Through  a 
trust  the  people  get  less  than  they  want  of  articles  and  pay  more  than  they 
ought  to  pay.  It  is  by  means  of  a  trust  that  Rockefeller  can  command  the 
labor  of  50,000  Connecticut  farmers  in  return  for  one  day's  labor  of  his 
own.  His  wealth  is  mainly  the  result  of  the  direct  robbery  of  the  consumers 
of  oil.  He  can  say  to  the  farmer,  "  So  much  of  your  crops  must  you  give 
to  me  annually  for  the  privilege  of  burning  oil."  The  farmer  re- 
plies, "You  ask  too  much,  I  cannot  afford  such  a  profit  to  you.  "  What 
can  the  farmer  do  about  it  ?  He  can  sit  in  the  dark  evenings  or  burn  tal- 
low, for  Rockefeller  has  throttled  the  other  refiners  of  oil  so  that  there  is 
practically  no  one  but  himself  left  to  buy  of.  So  it  is  with  every  other 
article  of  use  where  a  trust  can  be  formed,  whether  it  is  sugar,  farmer's 
tools,  copper  or  rubber. 

And  the  fa/mer  sits  passive  and  allows  himself  to  be  robbed  until  his 
whole  farm  is  robbed  away,  all  without  an  effort  to  protect  himself. 

It  is  the  consumer  of  necessaries  who  is  knifed  in  a  vital  part  by  the 
trust,  and  the  farmers  and  mechanic  classes  are  the  principal  body  of  con- 
sumers. The  trusts  levy  toll  just  as  the  railroads  do.  They  might  as  well 
go  to  a  man  in  the  night  and  say  give  us  a  third  or  half  of  your  earnings 
for  the  year. 

Trusts  can  ba  formed  in  nearly  every  line  of  production.  Every  new 
trust  robs  the  farmer  and  wage-earner  more.  At  length  monopoly  will  de- 
termine the  price  of  everything  to  the  farmer,  and  then  every  farm  will  be 
mortgaged  and  soon -after  lost. 

The  remedy  is  this  :  for  the  farmers  and  wage-earners  to  take  the  gov- 
ernment out  of  the  hands  of  their  enemies  the  lawyers  and  capitalists,  and 
to  fix  the  prices  that  trusts  may  charge.  Trusts  are  the  natural  develop- 
ment of  business  from  competition  to  combination  and  co-operation.  The 
paople  should  not  destroy  the  trusts  but  should  take  possession  of  them  and 
make  their  banefits  reach  all  instead  of  merely  the  capitalist  owners. 

At  tti3  same  tims  there  is  no  reason  why  the  government  should  not 
buy  soma  of  these  great  plants  at  a  right  figure — just  as  the  English  buy 


107 

our  successful  breweries  and  flouring  and  iron  mills — and  enjoy  their  future 
profits.  The  English  retain  the  same  managers  and  so  should  the  govern- 
ment do;  there  would  be  no  more  danger  of  government  loss  than  of 
English  loss;  and  there  would  be  a  certainty  of  great  profit  to  the  peopl  3 
instead  of  vast  wealth  to  Rockefeller  and  Carnegie  and  the  other  monopolist 
pirates. 

III.  The  farmer  is  robbed  by  the  wholesale  and  retail  store.  Look 
how  farmers  and  wage-earners  are  made  to  support  towns-people  by  this 
wasteful  system  of  competitive  store-keeping!  Let  us  consider  drug  stores. 
I.i  tliLs  section  of  five  or  six  thousand  people  there  are  four  drug  stores  bid- 
lin_r  I'  >]•  trade.  Roughly  figured  their  annual  expenses  are  as  follows: — . 

Kent  for  rooms, . 1500  00 

Clerk    hire, 1800  00 

Profits  of  owners, 3200  00 

Fuel,  lights  etc., 500  00 

Advert  ism- 200    00 


Total, $7200  00 

All  the  business  of  these  four  stores  might  be  more  conveniently  done 
in  one  store,  by  a  manager  and  two  assistants.     Expenses  would  then  be  : 

Kent  for   room, $  500  00 

Assistants'  salaries, 1200  01) 

Manager's    salary, 800  00 

Fuel,  lights  etc., 150  00 

Advertising 000  00 


Total, $2650  on 

The  annual  saving  is  $4550  00. 

There  are  other  unnecessary  expenses  that  cannot  so  easily  be  s  >t  out 
in  nnnihers.  namely  : — 

Four  sets  of  drug  furniture,  such  as  show  cases,  bottles,  etc. 

L  «s  from  boxing,  freight  and  express  charges,  cartage  and  billing  of 
goods  to  four  stores  in  place  of  one. 

Loss  from  purchase  of  goods  in  four  small  quantities  instead  of  on  • 
larire,  with  wholesale  reduction. 


108 

Expense  of  wholesale  traveling  salesmen,  going  about  the  country  to 
keep  purchasers  attached  to  their  firms. 

Expense  of  keeping  up  competitive  wholesale  houses,  of  which  the 
foregoing  criticisms  of  retail  stores  may  be  repeated.  The  number  of  stores, 
managers  and  clerks,  is  several  times  too  large. 

All  of  these  unnecessary  losses  and  expenses  are  paid  by  the  consumer 
of  the  goods.  He  pays,  in  a  high  price  for  the  goods,  the  rent,  salaries, 
and  advertising  of  the  superfluous  wholesale  and  retail  stores. 

What  is  true  of  the  drug  trade  is  true  of  other  trades.  The  idle  retail 
dealers  and  their  clerks  sit  waiting  for  customers ;  out  there  in  the  fields 
and  factories  and  upon  railroads  men  are  putting  in  from  ten  to  fifteen 
hours  of  real  labor  at  a  stretch.  Would  it  not  be  economy  in  production  if 
two-thirds  of  the  store-tenders  were  set  loose  to  go  and  work  where  the 
workers  have  more  than  they  can  do? 

This  then  is  the  remedy,  for  the  people  to  have  their  own  sjtores  in 
common,  putting  in  their  own  managers,  buying  direct  from  the  producer 
and  manufacturer.  Store-keeping  is  monotonous,  confining,  worrying, 
health-ruining.  Store-keepers  are  a  puny  set  of  in-door  folk.  Think  how 
in  their  prisons  they  are  cut  off  from  the  delights  and  strength  of  the  living 
earth  !  Take  pity  on  them  and  let.  them  out,  as  most  of  them  would  be 
glad  to  be  let  out. 

IV.  The  farmer  is  robbed  by  the  banks,  or  the  money  lenders,  whose 
agents  the  banks  are.  After  the  railroads,  the  trusts,  and  the  stores  have 
cut  their  slices  out  of  his  product,  he  finds  that  he  has  not  enough  left  to 
buy  his  machinery  and  fertilizers  to  begin  next  year's  toil  for  these  corpu- 
lent interests.  So  he  goes  to  the  bank  and  borrows  money,  securing  it  by 
his  land.  He  purchases  the  machinery  and  begins  to  work  again  for  the 
railroad  owners  the  trusts  and  the  store-keepers.  But  now  he  has  to  give  a 
share  of  his  produce  to  a  fourth  person,  the  banker,  who  takes  it  in  the 
form  or  8  per  cent  interest.  He  was  not  able  to  give  the  railroad  the  trust 
and  the  store  what  they  exacted  from  him  before  the  banker's  turn  came, 
and  how  then  will  he  be  able  to  satisfy  their  appetites  and  the  banker's  too  ? 
He  will  satisfy  them  all  by  increasing  the  mortgage  from  year  to  year,  and 
by  and  by  he  will  give  them  full  satisfaction  by  giving  them  his  farm. 

When  he  goes  to  buy  the  machines  with  money  borrowed  of  the  bank, 
he  is  paying  the  bank  eight  per  cent  for  the  privilege  of  using  machines 


KHI 

principally  for  the  benefit  of  the  railroad,  the  trust,  and  the  store.  Al- 
together these  agencies  arc  so  liard  with  him  that  they  will  not  allow  him  a 
fair  living  for  working  for  them,  and  enough  besides  to  keep  his  farm  from 
decay.  They  want  his  work  and  the  farm  too.  When  his  farm  is  gone  he 
is  even  less  independent,  and  they  can  get  still  more  work  from  him  without 
the  pay  of  a  fair  living. 

The  remedy,  .-<>  far  as  the  banks  and  money  lenders  are  concerned,  is 
to  make  all  interest  (or  all  over  a  definite  small  amount)  payable  to  the 
government,  the  banks  acting  as  agents  of  the  government  and  transact  ing 
I  he  business.  Interest  mav  be  a  necessitv  under  our  present  commercial 
system,  but  it  should  not  go  to  private  persons  since  the  loaner-of  money 
manifestly  does  nothing  to  earn  the  interest.  It  should  go  to  the  people  as 
a  whole,  to  b  •  ns  •(!  for  public  works,  education  and  other  improvements. 

When  interest  goes  to  the  government  the  rent  of  land  should  likewise 
g.)  t  >  the  government  for  public  uses.  A  great  deal  of  wealth  that  is 
created  by  the  public  passes  into  private  hands  because  laud  is  treated  as 
private  property.  State  ownership  of  land  would  secure  all  increased  value 
of  land  through  growth  of  the  community,  to  the  State. 

It  is  not  very  difficult  to  see  how  these  great  beneficent  changes  may 
be  set  going.  Hitherto  we  have  allowed  a  class,  the  monied  class — -to  have 
llu-ir  own  wav  about  most  things.  They  have  looked  out  for  themselves 
very  well,  but  they  have  reduced  the  rest  of  the  population  to  bondage. 
The  farmers,  the  wage-earners,  and  the  people  generally  with  small  means 
are  i  he  irreat  sufferers.  But  then  they  are  the  overwhelming  majority. 
They  may  change  the  laws  to  day  and  legislate  the  fortunes  out  of  existence, 
and  legislate  justice  to  themselves.  '  The  ballot  is  wonderfully  providential 
if  there  is  enlightenment  and  moral  force  behind  it.  By  just  one  sitting  of 
Congress  and  the  Legislatures,  all  the  rich  oppressors  might  be  unkinged 
and  stript  of  their  power  to  enslave.  Beautiful  is  the  mechanism  of  the 
ballot,  which  Can  work  revolutions  without  one  drop  of  blood. 

The  farmer  and  the  mechanic  are  brothers  in  this  matter  of  bringing 
the  robbery  <>f  trusts  and  railroads  and  banks  to  an  end.  The  labor  organi- 
zations and  the  Farmer's  Alliance  have  opened  the  campaign.  It  is  a  con- 
flict between  capitalists  and  citi/ens.  If  the  capitalists  survive  the  citizens 
will  not  survive,  for  citi/ Miship  is  not  possible  without  independence,  and 
combined  capital  leaves  no  chance  for  that. 


110 

Is  this  my  only  suggestion  you  ask?  Have  not  politics  proved  them- 
selves Unutterably  vicious  and  barren?  Not  wholly.  Politics  entered  into 
the  late  war  of  rebellion  and  parties  had  something  to  do  with  freeing  the 
slave.  But  the  parties  are  sold  out  to  the  capitalists  now,  and  legisla- 
tion is  not  the  first  work  that  the  working  people  have  to  do.  The  secret  of 
their  success  lies  in  organization.  Capital  is  consolidating  and  now  the  peo- 
ple must  consolidate  or  be  crushed.  The  matter  has  come  to  the  point  of 
war.  Capitalists  can  starve  miners,  mill  hands,  railroaders  and  farmers  and 
are  doing  it  every  day.  They  have  taken  the  field  against  the  rest  of  man- 
kind with  their  heavy  artillery  of  monopoly  and  their  light  arms  of  church 
and  government.  It  is  easy  for  them  to  mow  down  women  and  children 
and  unarmed  men,  and  this  they  are  doing,  playfully  murdering  the  weak 
by  refusing  them  the  means  to  buy  bread.  Perhaps  the  cowed  and  pillaged 
rabble — and  to  that  number  you  and  I  belong — will  one  day  learn  that  their 
only  relief  lies  in  combination,  in  the  organization  of  a  great  league  of  mid- 
dle class  and  poor  men  to  sweep  capital  rule  from  the  face  of  the  earth. 
We  have  a  thousand  times  their  number  and  yet  we  go  like  lambs  to  be 
killed  and  eaten  by  them. 

After  the  formation  of  an  immense  combination  of  all  working  classes 
which  should  refuse  longer  to  sell  its  labor  and  itself  to  the  capitalist  lord- 
lings,  setting  up  a  permanent  strike  against  the  present  masters  and  tyrants, 
they  should  proceed  through  their  representatives  in  the  legislatures  and 
congress  to  enact  a  new  order  of  society  where  slavery  and  economic  mur- 
der would  not  be  known.  And  against  the  solid  columns  of  our  organized 
and  determined  foe  they  have  no  other  hope. 

Such,  my  friends,  is  the  condition  of  our  country,  about  which  you 
have  asked  me  to  speak.  We  are  many  of  us  blind  to  it,  but  this  happy 
blindness  cannot  last.  You  will  help  to  determine  the  future,  and  if  you 
are  strong  and  courageous  you  will  set  yourselves  free. 


Ill 


Some  Thoughts  on  the  Growing  Revolution. 


In  a  timely  paper  by  one  of  the  most  temperate  ethical  and  economic 
writers,  Professor  Henry  Sidgwick,  the  morality  of  strife  is  critically  in- 
vestigated. *  He  argues  that  the  time  of  peace  among  nations  and  men  is 
still  far  in  the  futune.  Among  individuals  *  the  growth  of  sympathetic 
resentment  against  wrongs  seems  not  unlikely  to  cause  as  much 
strife  as  the  diminution  of  mere  selfishness  prevents,  for  in  a  world 
where  most  men  are  still  as  selfish  as  now  "enthusiasm  for  humanity," 
though  it  will  diminish  an  individual's  tendency  to  fight  in  his  own 
quarrels,  will  make  him  more  eager  to  take  part  with  others  who  are 
wronged  ; '  and  between  nations  one  convinced  that  its  claim  is  right  must 
to  an  important  extent  be  judge  in  its  own  cause  and  cannot  feel  justified 
in  risking  its  interests  to  arbitration. 

We  are  impressed  with  the  Socialistic  claims  for  complete  justice  for 
all  men  and  a  conception  of  humanity  wide  enough  to  obliterate  national 
interests  in  an  organic  world  sentiment;  but  while  we  dream  of  this  con- 
summation the  unyielding  fact  confronts  us  that  '  most  men  are  still  selfish, ' 
and  the  task  of  the  minority  in  effecting  a  social  reconstruction  seems  very 
great.  It  is  here  that  the  principle  entertained  by  Mr.  Sidgwick  seems  to 
apply,  for  the  more  the  humane  and  enlightened  few  recognize  the  blind  in- 
domitable compulsion  the  majority  are  under  from  the  selfishness  of  their 
natures  to  cohere  to  their  selfish  pursuits,  and  as  they  comprehend  the 
awful  penalties  brought  down  upon  the  whole  race  by  this  obdurate  self- 
seeking,  and  the  keen  horrors  endured  by  the  weak,  the  more  fearfully 
uriivnt  and  immediate  becomes  the  obligation  upon  them  to  circumvent, 

*     lutt-nintioiial  Journal  of  Kt/ih-n,  Vol.  1  No.  1. 


112 

vanquish  and  terminate  this  selfishness  and  haughty  wrong  and  save 
mankind  from  longer  havoc  thro  its  curse.  Then  is  their  consciousness  of 
weakness  greatest,  and  then  also  they  know  that  the  thing  must  be  done. 

It  behooves  such  to  consider  the  relation  that  physical  force  bears  to 
progress,  for  it  is  not  certain  that  physical  force  may  not  be  again  necessary 
to  achieve  this  progress.  Our  whole  humanity  cries  out  to  the  depths  in 
hope  that  it  may  not  be  necessary,  but  the  deeps  wing  back  no  answer  and 
we  must  prepare  ourselves  for  the  slow  decision  of  time.  Albeit  some 
things  we  may  believe  the  internal  powers  have  deliberated  on  and  settled, 
settled  after  ages  of  neglect  and  somnolence,  and  greatest  and  best  of  their 
decrees  is  this  one,  that  the  inequalities  of  life  are  to  be  stopped,  contro- 
vened,  leveled.  If  this  cannot  be  done  without  force  it  must  be  done  with 
force,  for  their  continuance  cannot  by  any  reason  or  sophistry  be  justified. 

Do  some  remind  us  of  the  horrors  of  war,  the  lives  sacrificed,  the  hates 
bred,  the  swift  tearing  down  of  good  with  bad,  and  the  long  slow  recupera- 
tion and  the  difficulty  of  even  regaining  ground  apparently  lost?  Let  us 
give  the  honest  people  who  chant  in  this  vein  something  to  think  about. 
Why  have  wars  ever  been  entered  on?  To  terminate  a  state  of  suffering  in 
which  some  section  of  the  race  experienced  steadily  more  misery  than  the 
war  could  bring  to  them  and  misery  not  to  be  removed  except  by  war.  War 
brings  on  disease  and  shortens  life  :  so  does  the  way  these  people  are  forced 
to  exist.  Wars  mutilate  :  so  do  factories  and  railroads  and  mines.  But 
all  these  horrible  injuries  are  passed  quietly  by  and  treated  as  nothing,  tho 
their  amount  in  each  decade  far  exceeds  a  war  that  would  cure  them. 

There  is  a  misplaced  sentimentality  on  this  subject.  The  secret  of  it  is 
that  if  war  supervened  the  upper  and  powerful  class  with  their  property 
would  suffer,  and  now  only  the  lower  and  weak  class  suffers  and  that  is  of 
no  account.  The  weak  class  might  continually  suffer  ten  times  over  what 
the  powerful  class  would  suffer  by  a  war,  and  the  powerful  class  would  de- 
nounce the  inhumanity  of  the  war  and  cry  down  vengeance  from  heaven  upon 
those  villainous  ones  who  made  the  war  to  deliver  themselves  from  ten-fold 
worse.  This  has  been  the  course  of  history,  a  fact  to  which  Mr.  Froude  has 
borne  striking  evidence  in  the  following  paragraph  from  his  "Julius 
Ciesar.  "  "Patricians  and  plebeians,  aristocrats  and  democrats,  have  alike 
stained  their  hands  in  blood  in  working  out  the  problem  of  politics.  But 


impartial  history  declares,  also,  that  the  crimes  of  the  popular  party  have  in 
all  ages  been  the  lighter  in  degree,  while  in  themselves  they  have  more  to 
excuse  them ;  and  if  the  violent  acts  of  revolutionists  have  been  held  up 
more  conspicuously  for  condemnation,  it  has  been  only  because  the  fate  of 
noblemen  and  gentlemen  has  been  more  impressive  to  the  imagination  than 
the  fate  of  the  peasant  or  artisan.  But  the  endurance  of  the  inequalities  of 
life  by  the  poor  is  the  marvel  of  human  society.  When  the  people  complain, 
said  Mirabeau,  the  people  are  always  right.  The  popular  cause  has  been 
the  cause  of  the  laborer  struggling  for  a  right  to  live  and  breathe,  and 
think  as  a  man.  Aristocrats  fight  for  wealth  and  power  :  wealth  which 
they  waste  upon  luxury  and  power  which  they  abuse  for  their  own 
interests.  " 

The  people  have  always  been  deterred  from  sweeping  away  these  in- 
equalities fully  by  the  superstition  that  there  was  some  historic  justice  in 
them,  a  myth  that  the  aristocrats  have  assiduously  fed.  They  have  been 
taught  to  believe  it  impious  to  strike  for  equality  and  freedom,  when  the 
impious  course  was  to  endure  inequality  and  slavery.  Now  this  superstition 
has  been  given  up,  and  the  charge  of  impiety  and  criminality  is  reversed, 
being  brought  against  those  who  are  accountable  for  the  inequalities,  who 
en-ate,  enjoy  and  retain  them,  the  aristocrats,  the  powerful.  It  is  high  time 
to  rid  ourselves  of  this  extra  respect  for  aristocracies,  whether  they  be  of 
blood  or  money.  Mr.  Gold  win  Smith  has  within  a  week  published  these 
unanswerable  words  :  "It  does  not  seem  to  me  that  the  British  aristocracy, 
since  the  days  of  the  first  Tudor,  from  which  the  present  group  of  families 
really  dates  its  origin,  has  done  much  good  either  to  its  own  nation  or  to 
humanity.  Its  history  appears  to  me  to  be  an  almost  unvaried  record  of 
class  selfishness.  "  *  Plainer  condemnation  could  not  be  spoken.  And  yet 
mark  :  this  class,  these  aristocrats,  useless,  not  paying  their  way  in  the 
world,  living  by  the  labor  of  others,  robbing  others  legally  by  laws 
they  made,  vast  social  burdens,  selfish  beyond  belief,  this  class  has  the 
power  to  stamp  every  effort  to  throw  them  off  by  the  beridden  race  that 
they  plunder,  as  vicious,  inhuman,  incendiary,  to  be  crushed  out  with 
bullets  and  bastiles  and  guillotines.  We  cannot  credit  it.  We  are  cer- 

*     N«\v  Y-.rk  fnftri>t>nilfnf.  March  19,  IHill. 


114 

tain  we  hear  the  mighty  masses  laughing  these  mad  pretensions  to  scorn  ; 
we  see  the  farce  of  thrones  and  titles  concluded  by  the  hand  of  the 
giant  Proletarians,  and  unearned  incomes  and  properties  revoked.  The 
hideous  false  view  of  life  these  gentry  sustain  !  Their  power  to  make  the 
right  seem  wrong  and  the  wrong  right!  What,  in  the  catechism  of  hu- 
manity, is  the  first  duty  of  mankind?  To  remove  these  aristocrats  from 
power  and  wealth.  What — in  the  catechism  of  the  aristocracy — is  the 
chief,  vilest,  and  most  damnable  crime?  To  take  from  them  a  shred  or 
feather-weight  or  iota  of  their  power  to  tax,  exploit,  rob  and  degrade  the 
rest  of  us.  .  A  singular  ethical  divergence!  and  because,  as  Mr.  Froude 
says,  "the  fate  of  nobleman  and  gentleman  has  been  more  impressive  to  the 
imagination  than  the  fate  of  the  peasant  or  artisan,"  because  aristocrats 
own  the  imagination  of  the  press,  pulpit,  court  and  law-making  body — own- 
ing them  physically  and  materially  for  the  most  part  also — they  have  made 
their  catechism  the  generally  accepted  one,  and  the  worse  cause  appear  the 
better. 

I  am  not  speaking  now  solely  of  British  aristocrats,  in  whom  I  have  no 
espacial  interest,  but  of  aristocracies  in  all  countries,  including  aristocrats 
of  wealth.  The  last  faction  brings  us  onto  American  soil.  Continuing  his 
fine  and  truthful  description  of  the  British  aristocracy  Mr.  Goldwin  Smith 
says :  •*•  I  could  only  wish  to  see  its  political  interference  on  this  continent 
brought  to  an  end,  and  its  efforts  to  aggrandize  itself  in  this  hemisphere 
confined  to  marrying  American  heiresses  and  speculating  in  land.  Its  in- 
terventions here  have  neither  been  salutary  to  the  inhabitants  of  this  conti- 
nent nor  creditable  to  itself That  artificial  rank  exalts  the  sentiment  of 

its  possessors  and  lifts  them  above  the  sordid  selfishness  of  the  vulgar,  is  the 

most  baseless  of  fictions Unless  the  spirit  of  the  American  people  is 

poorer  and  lower  than  well-wishers  would  willingly  believe  it  to  be,  the  day 
has  dawned  in  which  this  continent  will  be  finally  set  free  from  European 
interference  and  given  up  without  reserve  to  its  own  destiny  as  the  home  of 
a  new  and  happier  humanity.  " 

During  the  Corn-Laws'  agitation  in  England,  Sir  Edward  Knatchbull, 
who  was  a  Cabinet  minister  said,  "  The  duty  on  corn  should  be  calculated 
in  such  a  manner  as  ta  return  to  the  landed  interest  full  security  for  their 
property,  and  for  the  station  in  the  country  which  they  had  hitherto 


115 

held."  *  The  same  Sir  Edward  Knatchbull  spoke  of  the  "  peculiar  bur- 
dens" laid  upon  the  land,  which  ought  to  be  considered,  one  of  these  being 
the  duty  of  " making  provisions  for  younger  children,"  wherefore  the 
cheapening  of  food  for  the  poor  thro  abolition  of  the  Corn-Laws  was  "quite 
impracticable.  "  f  This  is  the  spirit  and  intelligence  of  an  aristocracy. 

We  may  set  ourselves  free  from  the  interference  of  British  aristocracy, 
as  \\\»  shall  doubtless  soon  effectually  and  with  good  consequences  do  ;  but 
we  shall  then  find  that  all  aristocracies  are  in  their  essential  character  the 
B1J13  and  that  W3  have  baeu  brooding  and  pampering  an  endemic  aristoc- 
racy of  our  own,  an  aristocracy  of  wealth.  Our  own  rich  stand  to  us  as  the 
titl ;  1  aristocrats  do  to  British  subjects.  Take  away  the  property  of  all 
these  title- wearers  and  what  would  their  power  be?  The  inner  principle  of 
all  aristocracies  is  a  superiority  not  eminatiug  from  the  nature  of  the  man, 
extraneous  and  therefore  artificial.  It  may  be  given  by  rank  or  money, 
both  spacial  attachments,  not  constituents  of  character.  And  both  will 
work  out  the  same  results,  selfishness  and  vulgarity.  The  aristocratic  spirit 
has  always  been  bound  up  with  possessions,  which  are  essential  to  it.  This 
was  true  when  rank  was  a  far  more  real  thing  than  it  is  now.  In  the  Me- 
dea o!'  Kuripides  Jason  defended  himself  by  saying: 

"But  to  me  it  seemed 

• 

Of  great  importance  that  we  both  might  live 

As  suits  or  rank,  nor  suffer  abject  need, 

Well  knowing  that  each  friend  avoids  the  poor." 

The  substance  of  aristocracy  will  go  wherever  great  and  unequal  possessions 
go. 

The  whole  past  is  on  the  side  of  aristocracy  and  unequal  possessions, 
and  yet  in  the  light  of  reason  these  things  are  trumpery.  They  simply  an- 
nihilate happiness  for  the  majority-.  They  should  abdicate  but  they  will 
not;  their  LTCIHUS  is  absolute  dominion.  They  unwilling  must  be  con- 
strained to  abdicate.  Let  it  be  a  gentle  constraint  at  first,  but  let  these 
antique  injuries  be  at  length  utterly  out-rooted.  This  determination  of 

*  Concerning  which  Mr.  M.  VI.  Trumbull  (in  his  '-Thd  American  Lesson  of  the  Free  Trade 
Struggle  in  England,"  p.  75  )  says:  No  matter  how  biting  the  hanger  of  the  industrious  poor  might 
be,  the  price  of  bread  must  be  kept  so  high  that  the  idle,  fox-hunting,  horse-racing  aristocracy  might 
Htill  riot  in  profligate  extravagance." 

t     The  *ame<  p.  115. 


116 

aristocracy  and  the  selfish  power  for  possession  to  stay,  coupled  with  the 
general  inertia  and  superstition  of  mankind,  give  rise  to  the  doubt  whether 
strife  and  the  necessity  for  physical  force  have  yet  been  transcended.  We 
have  had  Mr.  Bagehot  assuring  us  that  "  Experience  shows  how  incredibly 
difficult  it  is  to  get  men  really  to  encourage  the  principle  of  originality. 
They  will  admit  it  in  theory,  but  in  practice  the  old  error — the  error  which 
arrested  a  hundred  civilizations — returns  again.  Men  are  too  fond  of  their 
own  life,  too  credulous  of  the  completeness  of  their  own  ideas,  too  angry  at 
the  pain  of  new  thoughts,  to  be  able  to  bear  easily  with  a  changing  exist 
ence  ; "  and  Henry  Maine  has  dwelt  with  even  greater  emphasis 
upon  the  relatively  small  portion  of  the  human  race  which  will 
so  much  as  tolerate  a  proposal  or  attempt  to  change  its  usages,  laws, 
and  institutions."  He  declares  that  "to  the  fact  that  the  enthusiasm 
for  change  is  comparatively  rare  must  be  added  the  fact  that  it  is 
extremely  modern.  It  is  known  but  to  a  small  part  of  mankind,  and  to 
that  part  but  for  a  short  period  during  a  history  of  incalculable  length.  "  * 
And  yet  it  is  certain  that  what  good  mankind  has  attained  has  come 
through  change.  And  by  those  who  would  have  the  fruition  for  the  race 
of  all  past  efforts  to  attain  infinitely  greater  good  than  we  have  yet  reached, 
the  inertia  must  again  be  overcome.  They  must  meet  this  opposition  with 
deliberation,  cool  resolve  and  will.  The  change  is  worth  any  effort  that 
may  be  put  forth  to  gain  it ;  if  the  opposition  is  formidable  and  determined 
the  will  to  break  it  down  must  be  formidable  and  complete.  The  temper 
of  all  present-day  reformers  must  be  that  displayed  by  Lincoln  in  his  Peoria 
speech  of  1854.  He  said  :  "  Slavery  is  founded  in  the  selfishness  of  man's 
nature — opposition  to  it,  in  the  love  of  justice.  These  principles  are  in 
eternal  antagonism  ;  and  when  brought  into  collision  as  fiercely  as  slavery 
extension  brings  them,  shocks  and  throes  and  convulsions  must  follow  cease- 
lessly. Repeal  the  Missouri  Compromise;  repeal  all  compromises  ;  repeal 
the  Declaration  of  Independence ;  repeal  all  past  history  ;  you  cannot  re- 
peal human  nature.  It  will  still  be  in  the  abundance  of  man's  heart  that 
slavery  extension  is  wrong,  and  out  of  the  abundance  of  his  heart  his  mouth 
will  continue  to  speak.  "  Material  inequality  is  slavery.  Justice  says, 

*    Popular  Government,  pp.  132, 134. 


117 

abolish  this.  There  will  be  no  peace  on  earth  until  inequality  is  abolished, 
and  there  should  be  no  peace.  If  equality  must  be  bought  by  bloodshed, 
let  us  have  bloodshed  ;  let  us  have  riots  and  rebellions  and  violent  revolu- 
tions, if  necessary.  For  the  reward  of  these  sorrows  is  worth  any  price,  the 
reward  is  human  happiness,  human  freedom,  human  development.  Let  us 
not  flinch  :  wars  are  deplorable,  but  there  are  other  evils  immeasurably 
more  deplorable.  The  life  we  now  lead  is  more  deplorable  ;  it  is  an  unut- 
terable shame  to  us  that  we  consent  to  lead  it ;  if  war  and  many  deaths 
would  lift  us  higher,  out  of  this  death  in  life,  let  us  welcome  war  and 
death. 

Revolution — violent  revolution,  I  mean — has  many  enemies,  all  doubt- 
less with  some  thought  of  the  French  Revolution.  One  writes  of  it  in  its 
relation  to  present  movements  as  follows:  "We  do  need,  as  you  say,  a 
revolution  of  a  certain  kind,  and  yet  it  may  be  well  to  be  a  little  slow  about 
using  that  word.  The  revolution  which  we  desire  will  accomplish  the 
greatest  amount  of  enduring  good  if  it  is  a  gradual  'and  peaceful  one.  I 
used  to  he  a  great  admirer  of  the  French  Revolution,  but  the  more  I  reflect 
upon  it  and  the  more  I  study  history  and  present  social  conditions,  the  more 
I  am  inclined  to  regard  it  as  most  unfortunate.  The  mere  facti  of  the 
French  Revolution  is  one  of  the  most  serious  obstacles  which  social  reform- 
ers have  to  encounter  to-day.  The  very  mention  of  it  is  to  the  ordinany 
mind  an  argument  against  far  reaching  social  reform.  Perhaps  you  may 
not  have  studied  carefully  the  period  immediately  preceding  the  French 
Revolution.  There  were  at  that  time,  it  seems  to  me,  in  France  and  else- 
where many  good  movements,  and  very  promising  movements,  which  might 
have  accomplished  fur  more  for  us  had  not  the  French  Revolution  inter- 
rupted their  normal  development.  "  It  is,  to  me,  a  sufficient  answer  to 
this  argument  to  reflect  how  slow  all  reforms  were  before  the  Revolution, 
and  how  slow  they  must  have  continued  to  be  without  the  new  precedent 
and  encouragement  of  the  Revolution.  Men  then  began  to  have  substantial 
hopes,  to  make  somewhat  adequate  demands,  and  to  harbor  ideals  concern- 
ing their  possible  state  that  must  previously  have  been  unthinkable  and 
undared.  Centuries  of  peaceful  "development"  would  not  so  effectually 
have  annihilated  some  of  the  most  injurious  political  and  social  superstitions, 
as  did  the  uprising  of  the  French  people  in  one  day.  In  all  our  present  re- 


118 

forms  and  ideas  of  reform  we  are  banking  on  the  capital  of  that  event,  altho 
we  may  think  it  a  great  hindrance  to  the  acceptance  of  our  ideas. 

The  view  that  Mr.  Frederic  Harrison  has  given  of  this  matter  seems  to 
me  the  most  philosophical  of  any.  *  "  The  Revolution,  "  as  he  says,  "did 
not  happen  in  1789  nor  in  1793.  The  Terror  was  in  '93  ;  the  Old  System 
collapsed  in  '89.  But  the  Revolution  is  continuing  still,  violent  in  France, 
deep  and  quiet  in  England.  No  one  of  its  problems  is  completely  solved  ; 
no  one  of  them  is  removed  from  solution  ;  no  one  of  its  creations  has  com- 
plete possession  of  the  field.  The  reconstruction  begun  more  than  a  hun- 
dred years  ago  is  doing  still.  For  they  see  history  upside  down  who  look 
at  the  Revolution  as  a  conflagration  instead  of  a  reconstruction  ;  or  who  find 
in  the  eighteenth  century  a  suicide  instead  of  finding  a  birth.  "  Looking 
at  the  event  thus  constructively  our  business  now  is  to  endeavor  to  conduct 
this  Revolution  to  maturity  and  its  consummation,  and  not  to  be  misled 
into  talking  of  the  violent  part  of  it  as  a  misfortune,  unless  we  intend  to 
say  that  man's  nature  is  a  misfortune  and  the  fact  that  he  was  not  created 
perfect  at  the  beginning  a  mistake.  We  have  come  up  thro  wars  and  revo- 
lutions and  we  had  to  come  up  so,  being  what  we  were  beforehand.  It  was 
a  sad  way  to  come,  but  it  was  better  to  come  that  way  than  not  to  come  at 
all.  If  the  necessity  of  wars  and  revolutions  is  upon  us  still  as  the  condi- 
tion of  higher  ascensions,  sad  as  the  process  is  let  us  mount  that  way  in 
preference  to  stagnating  and  dying  here.  It  would  have  been  mere  and 
sheer  sentimentality  to  have  opposed  war  as  an  instrument  of  progress  in 
the  past,  and  if  hating  and  opposing  war  now  is  to  prevent  progress  now  it 
is  still  sentimentality.  We  can  hardly  decide  whether  it  is  so.  'But  being 
of  necessity  uncertain  we  must  not  set  ourselves  unconditionally,  unrecon- 
cilably  and  unreasoningly  against  violent  means,  nor  flinch  from  them  if  it 
becomes  apparent  that  progress  still  requires  them. 

Physical  force  therefore  still  has  a  significance  and  possible  utility  and 
function  which  it  is  best  for  us  to  study  critically.  Physical  force  stands  in 
a  relation  to  progress  that  it  is  weak  to  overlook  or  permit  any  one  to 
banish  from  our  memories.  It  signifies  resolution.  It  typifies  the  state  of 
mind  of  one  who  is  quite  determined  to  have  the  thing  he  wishes  accom- 


*    "The  Eighteenth  Century.1' 


119 

plished  at  any  expense  whatever.  This  is  very  different  from  the  average 
frame  of  mind,  which  does  not  want  anything  daring  done,  and  thinks  that 
if  things  are  not  going  well  they  at  any  rate  could  not  be  got  to  go  better. 
A  letter  of  John  Boyle  O'Reilly's  is  so  good  a  description  of  the  average 
frame  of  mind  that  we  may  adopt  it  as  the  norm  by  which  to  determine 
those  who  belong  to  the  average  multitude.  "I  am  no  cynic,  dear  old 
man  ; "  the  letter  reads,  "but  the  world  is  telling  on  me.  For  I  am  begin- 
ning to  be  ashamed  of  enthusiasm  ;  and  it  is  dawning  on  me,  like  a  bleak 
coast  coming  out  of  a  mist  on  a  gray  day  in  the  fall,  that  the  glorious  hopes 
and  beliefs  were  delusions  ;  that  the  world  is  hard  and  mean  and  censorious 
and  unchangeable  ;  that  unless  you  live  for  appearance'  sake  and  become  a 
practical  snob  (for  you  are  judged  and  valued  by  your  own  label,  and  those 
who  live  by  the  heart  have  no  label,  only  a  tag)  you  will  be  set  down  as  a 
fool,  and  avoided  by  all  the  precise  and  safe  and  successful  people.  ' '  *  None 
of  the  precise  and  safe  and  successful  people  want  to  venture  anything  for 
progress.  They  prefer  to  leave  progress  to  God,  or  to  evolution — another 
practical  abstraction  that  lets  them  out  of  personal  responsibility  and  effort. 
The  majority  of  precise  and  safe  and  successful  people  do  not  care  to  raise 
the  pressure  on  the  unsuccessful-crowd  from  whom  they  filch  their  success. 
The  earth  is  always  full-peopled  with  majorities  of  this  quality,  "hard  and 
mean  and  censorious  and  unchangeable  ' '  persons  if  ever  you  propose  pro- 
gress to  them,  tho  affable  in  social  and  religious  connections  and  sacrificing 
themselves  for  their  wives  and  children  whom  they  wish  to  lift  in  the  social 
scale  and  endow.  The  task  before  the  lover  of  progress  is  to  surprise  these 
hard  and  unchangeable  persons  out  of  their  meanness  and  censoriousness 
and  contracted  devotion  to  the  social  consequence  of  their  wives  and  daugh- 
ters, ihto  actions  that  tend  to  the  general  good ;  or,  if  he  cannot  get  this 
unchangeable  class  to  lend  a  hand  at  general  improvement,  to  find  means  to 
accomplish  progress  despite  their  opposition  and  disdain.  It  is  plain  that 
this  task  is  not  an  easy  one  and  that  those  who  set  their  affections  on  prog- 
pegg  must  have  determination  of  the  finest  temper  and  inextinguishable 
enthusiasm. 

The  man  of   average  mental   frame,  if   he  became  so   far  alive  that  he 


*     Ceor.'e  Parson*  Lathrop.  in  The  Independent,  Nov.  6,  1890. 


120 

felt  a  leisure-hour  interest  in  the  cause  of  good,  would  quickly  abandon  it 
for  innocuous  silence  when  he  found  the  other  precise  and  safe  and  success- 
ful people  ill-disposed  to  his  nascent  enthusiasm.  He  has  particular 
stomach  to  get  what  delectation  he  can  of  the  passing  hour  without  the 
thought  to  improve  it.  He  is  affrighted  of  the  fray  when  the  outposts  of 
the  difficulties  appear  to  him.  Strenuous  action  was  the  whole  orbit  more 
then  he  bargained  for.  What  he  lightly  dreamed  of  was  a  dress-parade  diver- 
sion,— as  many. a  now  scarred  veteran  went  to  the  late  war  for  a  few  weeks' 
escapade  ; — but  with  the  first  smoke  this  brave  warrior  for  ideas  skipped  the 
ranks.  He  did  not  calculate  on  the  elevated  eyebrows  of  his  intimates, — 
this  was  too  much.  And  like  this  man  the  most  of  our  moderns  are.  Shal- 
low, self-satisfied,  doing  what  others  do,  thinking  old,  dilapidated  thoughts, 
without  a  premonition  that  life  can  grow  and  be  glorified,  void  of  trust  in 
man's  capacity  to  recreate  his  conduct  and  customs  at  inclination. 

Imagine  relying  on  these  precious  people  for  disinterested  enterprise  ! 
Imagine  believing  in  their  Sunday  declamations  of  virtue  !  They  have  not 
the  metal  in  them  to  introduce  a  new  life  ;  they  have  it  not  in  their  blood  to 
perceive  the  vast  gains  of  a  new  life  or  even  to  be  tolerant  of  those  who, 
from  their  amazement  before  the  glory  of  living  there  is  to  be,  would  con- 
quer these  gains  by  their  own  labors. 

Therefore,  over  against  this  ill-disposed  class  of  fat  and  impenetrable 
minds,  there  must  be  some  who  say  with  the  prescience  and  assurance  of 
the  sun's  warmth  in  May,  a  new  life  shall  arise.  It  is  the  condition  of 
progress.  The  many  wait  and  oppose,  a  few  press  beyond  the  barriers  and 
bear  down  opposition  and  initiate.  They  are  men  of  such  central  resolution 
that  no  mental  rigidity,  no  resistance  of  selfishness,  of  masonry,  of  cannon, 
of  the  rope,  can  prevent  their  implantation  of  the  gerrninant  spiritual 
realities. 

The  new  thought  has  had  slow  development  because  of  the  heaven- 
failing  indecision  and  prudence  and  timidity  of  those  entrusted  with  it. 
They  entreat  that  we  may  gradually  educate,  and  time  will  perform  the 
rest; — time,  god,  evolution.  Alas  not  to  see  that  we  are  time,  god,  evolu- 
tion !  Had  St.  Paul  and  the  apostles  appealed  to  this  trinity  and  let  their 
own  incomparable  energy  sleep,  where  were  the  world  now?  They  believed 
in  Christ,  in  god,  the  God  that  lay  coiled  in  their  own  prodigious  capacity 


121 

to  act.  The  Christ  of  whom  they  learned  was  not  a  rambling  incoherent 
dreamer,  but  one  of  so  masterful  comprehension  that  the  irrelevancies  and 
mere  dressing  of  a  case  fell  away  when  his  mind  enveloped  it  and  his  swift 
moving  thought  and  perfect  will  left  no  chasm  between  conception  and 
deed.  His  might  lay  in  the  directness  and  concentration  of  his  nature. 
His  will  became  the  axis  of  the  moral  world,  so  firm-fixed  was  it  in 
comparison  with  the  shifting  irresolutions  of  other  men.  And  touched 
with  this  spirit  his  followers  compassed  the  earth  with  superhuman  joy  and 
success,  the  inalienable  property  of  those  with  unfailing  will. 

These  people  might  have  believed  in  their  thought  to  a  less  degree, 
and  said,  II'  we  go  on  proclaiming  the  things  we  have  inwardly  seen  and  felt 
there  will  be  struggles  and  turmoil ;  let  us  therefore  quench  the  flame  that 
burns  in  us.  What  had  then  become  of  the  world?  Wisely  they  divulged 
their  revolutionary  visions.  It  was  not  their  affair  if  the  world  were  rent  a 
thousand  ways  by  them.  They  announced  with  the  earnestness  that  we 
know  to  have  been  invincible,  the  coming  of  a  new  heaven  and  a  new  earth, 
the  pa^sinir  away  of  old  things — and  so  they  have  passed  away.  Persons  of 
less  depth  would  have  tempered  their  expressions,  saying,  'It  would  be  well 
if  old  things  could  pass  away,  '  but  such  would  have  made  no  indentation 
on  the  hard  finish  of  the  Roman  world.  Jesus  truly  did  not  say,  revolt, 
but  he  said,  '  Change  ye  your  hearts,'  and  change  of  heart  carried  revul- 
sions and  revolutions  and  alterations  of  the  earth  engermed  within  it.  No 
changed  heart  could  have  suffered  the  old  world  to  survive  as  it  was,  and 
had  the  old  world  survived  there  could  have  been  no  changed  hearts  in  the 
deep  Christian  sense.  And  in  reality  it  was  a  question  of  depth.  Nothing 
partial  sufficed  the  founder  of  the  new  life  because  the  partial  has  shallow 
and  perishable  foundations.  Depth  only  can  awaken  depth,  and  Jesus,  by 
descending  to  the  last  basis  of  right  and  ordaining  absolute  justice  and  abso- 
lute progress  of  man,  made  his  work  and  his  method  everlasting  and  eternal. 
Had  he  availed  himself  of  partial  principles  to  gain  temporary  results,  he 
would  have  been  like  modern  reformers,  the  apostles  of  science  and  culture, 
and  his  name  must  soon  have  disappeared. 

The  unique  feature  of  the  highest  type  of  reformers,  of  whom  Jesus 
was  one,  is  that  they  do  not  pause  sated  and  complacent  at  any  measured 
quantity  of  valiant  achievement,  but  propound  absolute  and  all-inclusive 


122 

demands.  The  successful  and  decent  proprietors  of  land  and  sky,  strung  by 
rudimentary  consciences,  or  the  fear  of  the  wrath  Fto  come,  or  the  knowledge 
that  the  one-time  solid  soil  of  unearned  privilege  is  sinking  under  their  feet, 
offer  concessions  :  "  Leave  us  on  our  caste  pinnacle  and  we  will  contribute 
generously  to  God  ;  we  will  write  his  name  imperishably  in  the  architecture 
of  our  temples,  that  he  may  wanton  in  this  beauty  and  forget  the  poor  out- 
side. Say  nothing  about  the  tenement  houses  from  which  we  derive  our 
rents  and  we  will  subscribe  salvation  to  the  Arabians.  Look  not  into  our 
factories  nor  digress  from  the  beaten  way  heavenward  by  prating  of  wages, 
and  we  will  see  that  these  factory  outcasts  have  reading-rooms,  dance-halls, 
sections  of  Y.  M.  C.  A.,  and  a  Christmas  present."  Many  a  lover  of  the 
stars  is  tricked  by  these  decent  people.  It  is  good  to  eat  at  broad  boards 
'mid  shining  silver  and  gold,  good  to  hear  the  sparkling  words  of  elegant 
sympathy  and  philanthrophy,  and  to  sip  the  ambrosial  wines  that  are  had 
from  the  marrow  of  an  hundred  factory  families.  And  when  the  moral  re- 
former is  invited  here  he  feels  that  God  indeed  is  with  him  and  has  set  a 
seal  of  triumph  on  his  work.  How  can  blinded  iconoclasts  proclaim  against 
such  loveliness  of  character  as  here  abounds  !  Rude,  course,  harsh  persons 
these  misstyled  '  improvers '  must  be  to  foam  against  the  transparent  hu- 
manity of  these  resplendent  souls.  So  it  is  the  clear-browed,  heaven-scaling 
youth,  oracle  and  expectation  of  the  trampled  millions,  succumbs  to  the 
soothing  spell  of  palaces  and  bullion  and  becomes  an  apologist  for  silken, 
plausible  tyranny.  His  heart  is  changed ;  a  new  light  is  born  upon  his 
soul.  The  client  of  gold-fed  culture  perceives  now  the  injustice  done 
against  the  rich  and  will  mitigate  its  flagrancy.  He  will  bring  the  classes 
together  by  the  sweet  compulsion  of  amalgamating  love,  Christian  love, 
cosmic  love,  lighting  his  torch  at  the  furnace  of  imperishable  love  seething 
in  rich  hearts,  discovered  by  himself,  unaccountably  hidden  from  several 
billion  contemporary  mortals  not  yet  invited  to  sip  soup  and  chat,  in  the  im- 
maculate circlet  of  these  irradiating  angels.  Could  there  be  a  more  god-like 
occupation  than  interpreting  the  effulgent  goodness  of  the  rich  to  the  dark- 
ened understandings  of  the  poor  ?  or  a  more  heavenly  harbinger  of  perfect 
unison  of  classes  and  masses  than  his  own  alliance  with  some  high  bred 
daughter  of  fortune  to  share  with  him  the  complicated  and  appalling  under- 
takings of  social  regeneration  ? 


123 

Steinhoff  is  one  of  Ibsen's  reformers,  who  founds  a  young  men's 
League  and  announces  that  "  the  money-bag  has  ceased  to  reign  here.  " 
He  turns  his  weapons  against  the  ' '  honorable  and  capable  ' '  men  of  the 
community.  One  of  them  invites  him  to  dinner.  "  Fine  furniture,  piano, 
flowers  and  rare  plants  "  are  there.  "  What  the  devil  could  I  do?"  asks 
the  reformer.  "  I  could  not  offend  such  decent  people.  " 

Apologists  of  the  defamed  rich  preach  that  reformers  who  cut  themselves 
off  from  the  rich  are  guilty  of  the  grossest  folly.  The  rich  are  the  source  of 
supplies,  I  have  heard  a  complaisant  professor  drawing  a  drowsy  salary  say. 
Tin-  arrn  of  the  Lord  must  be  upheld.  All  movements  for  good  require  '  sin- 
ews of  war, '  and  who  will  supply  them  if  not  the  rich  ?  Since  the  power  is  in 
the  pockets  of  the  rich  we  must  not  antagonize  their  pockets.  The  budding 
good  in  the  rich  should  not  be  discouraged.  The  rich  are  probably  tories 
thro  ignorance  (not  selfishness)  and  we  ought  to  be  good  enough  to  enlighten 
them,  good  enough  if  necessary  to  endevor  to  soften  their  hearts  with  the 
ulterior  purpose  of  loosening  their  purse-cords  and  promoting  the  growth  of 
excellent  works. 

Not  to  cut  yourself  off  from  the  ric*h  in  these  days  is  to  capitulate  and 
lose  the  game.  To  work  with  the  rich  is  to  surrender  to  the  enemy.  For 
riches  love  not  justice  and  equity  and  the  rich  love  not  justice,  and  long 
have  they  bought  of  the  powers  of  sunny  youth  a  respite  from  the  judgment 
that  hangs  by  a  thread  above  them. 

And  when  will  mighty  youth  cease  to  sell  itself?  All  power  belongs 
to  early  springing  manhood  :  the  earth  and  its  fullness,  and  the  calm  en- 
nobling niirht.  As  long  ago  as  the  seven  and  thirtieth  year  of  this  century 
Mr.  Emerson  spoke  sorrowfully  to  an  audience  of  selected  Americans  of  the 
evil  fate  which  hid  from  American  youths  their  incompa'feible  power. 
11  Young  men,  "  said  he,  "of  the  fairest  promise,  who  begin  life  upon  our 
shores,  inflated  by  the  mountain  winds,  shined  upon  by  all  the  stars  of 
(lod,  find  the  earth  below  not  in  unison  with  these,  but  are  hindered  from 
action  by  the  disgust  which  the  principles  on  which  business  is  managed  in- 
spire, and  turn  drudges,  or  die  of  disgust,  some  of  them  suicides.  What  is 
the  remedy?  They  did  not  yet  see,  and  thousands  of  young  men  as  hope- 
ful now  crowding  to  the  barriers  for  the  career  do  not  yet  see,  that  if  the 
single  man  plant  himself  indomitably  on  his  instincts,  and  there  abide,  the 


124 

huge  world  will  come  round  to  him.  Patience, — patience  ;  with  the  shades 
of  all  the  good  and  great  for  company  ;  and  for  solace  the  perspective  of 
your  own  infinite  life  ;  and  for  work  the  study  and  the  communication  of 
principles,  the  making  those  instincts  prevalent,  the  conversion  of  the 
world."  *  And  still  after  fifty-three  years,  "public  and  private  avarice 
make  the  air  we  breathe  thick  and  f at ;  "  Still  "the  scholar  is  decent,  in- 
dolent, complaisant." 

The  prophecy  of  Emerson  may  be  realized  now.  The  young  may  de- 
cline to  enter  the  active  occupations  of  life  on  the  old  terms.  I  know  a 
young  man  whose  apparent  business  is  groceries  ;  but  he  is  much  more  than 
this,  as  every  dealer  in  salt  and  flour  might  be.  His  leisure  hours  are 
spent  studying  the  lives  of  his  humbler  fellowmeu  and  revolving  plans  to 
exalt  their  lives.  He  visits  the  poor,  eats  with  them,  knows  them  as  Jesus 
knew  the  lowly,  and  says  "  I  am  getting  my  political  economy  and  my  re- 
ligion from  the  poor.  "  Him  I  honor.  I  compare  him  with  the  political 
economists  who  constitute  the  American  Academy  of  Political  and  Social 
Science,  "nearly  all  the  prominent  writers  and  thinkers  in  the  economic 
and  political  field  in  this  country*  and  many  foreign  scholars,  "  the  an- 
nouncement certifies,  who  issue  several  considerable  volumes  of  economic 
reflections  yearly,  and  I  say  this  young  economist  who  labors  with  his  hands 
nine  tenths  of  the  day  is  on  higher  ground  than  all  the  Academy.  The 
mere  fact  that  he  works  with  his  hands  places  him  immeasurably  above 
them,  on  ground  that  they  cannot  reach  until  they  work  with  their  hands. 
But  an  Academist  working  with  his  hands  is  at  present  unthinkable. 
Hereafter  there  can  be  no  real  political  economist  who  does  not  work  with 
his  hands.  Very  significant  words  are  those  of  a  recent  reviewer  ;  "  '  The 
reason  why  so  few  good  books  are  written, '  said  the  late  Walter  Bagehot, 
'is  that  so  few  people  who  can  write,  know  anything;'  and  by  this  he 
meant  that  the  literary  class,  leading  a  retired  existence,  has  little  experi- 
ence of  life  in  its  broader  aspects.  "  I  recall  the  majority  of  economists 
that  I  have  known  and  the  memory  chills  me ;  I  cannot  but  pity  the  young 
mind  over  which  they  gain  ascendency.  They  are  barren  and  they  make 
the  student  lives  of  those  that  believe  in  them  barren.  But  here  is  an  ob- 


*    The  American  Scholar. 


125 

server  who  is  living  and  feeling,  and  going  to  the  fountain  head  of  econ- 
omics, the  daily  lives  of  men. 

Inspiration  does  not  today  come  from  those  who  are  set  apart  and  sur- 
rounded with  privileges  in  order  that  they  may  render  us  back  the  highest 
inspiration  and  the  wisest  suggestion,  but  from  the  man  who  rises  from  the 
soil  of  common  actual  life,  obedient  to  his  instincts,  trusting  his  feelings 
and  genius. 

I  know  a  Christian  minister  *  of  such  unwonted  sensitiveness  to  the 
mandates  of  the  Eternal,  that  he  has  gone  forth  from  comfort  and  the  de- 
cent crowd  to  make  his  home  among  the  poorest  and  become  the  introducer 
of  an  order  of  social  right.  The  great  carnal  world  whose  last  flowers  are 
Ward  McAllister  and  John  Wanamaker  announce  concerning  men  who 
like  him  go  out  of  the  lazy  ranks  to  fight  alone,  that  their  influence  is  now 
justly  dead  and  the  estimable  world  will  hear  of  them  no  more.  I  tell  you 
the  most  dangerous  foe  the  world  has  is  just  this  man.  Let  the  carnal  so- 
ciety of  our  day  look  to  its  very  self-preservation  when  there  is  even  one 
such  between  the  borders  of  the  two  seas. 

A  young  writer  of  uncommon  promise,  Miss  Jessie  Genevieve  Tucker- 
man,  says  in  her  brief  description  of  "A  Revival  of  Religion,  "  "  Imagine 
a  thousand  souls  pledging  themselves  to  follow  the  life  of  Christ  in  the 
widest  sense.  Only  a  thousand  among  so  many  millions  of  people,  but  a 
leaven  that  would  set  the  nation  heaving.  Think  of  the  necessities  such 
vows  would  impose  upon  you  and  me.  What  social  customs  must  we  not 
disregard,  what  opinions  must  we  not  dare,  what  contempt  and  ridicule 
could  we  escape  !  " 

What  means  such  writing  as  this?  It  is  the  declaration  of  independ- 
ence of  the  younger  minds  of  our  day.  It  informs  that  the  subordination 
of  their  spirits  to  those  who  but  respect  and  repeat  the  habitual  practices  of 
the  world  is  finished.  They  will  go  to  church,  but  only  to  return  sorrowing 
that  the  pulpit  has  no  longer  aught  to  teach  them  ;  they  will  go  to  college 
but  only  to  learn  that  in  this  western  empire  with  all  the  illustrious  tra- 
ditions of  Aryan  enterprise  and  expansion  a  wasting  conformity  may  be 
taught;  and  they  will  go  out  to  order  their  lives  as  their  own  reasons  bid, 
the  enemies  and  outcasts  of  their  kind  if  the  need  is,  but  free,  free. 

*     Mr.  E.  P.  Foster,  of  Cincinnati. 


126 

Already  the  new  life  is  ours  when  these  souls  breathe.  You  may  take 
away  their  houses  and  lands  and  you  have  given  them  deliverance  from  a 
burden  whose  engrossing  care  robs  them  of  energy  to  live  ;  you  may  deprive 
them  of  support  and  they  are  glad  for  it  throws  them  the  more  upon  the 
rugged  and  fruitful  realities  and  shows  them  channels  to  the  heart  of  truth 
they  had  not  explored  ;  you  may  strip  them  of  friends,  and  this  too  is  good 
for  the  friendly  universe  is  within  them,  vast  and  companionable,  and 
nobler  spiritual  kindred,  scaling  new  glories  for  the  race  by  the  might  of 
of  invincible  rectitude,  wait  to  welcome  them. 

It  matters  no  longer  if  the  massive  world  goes  its  accustomed  course 
impatient  of  the  handful  who  have  set  themselves  to  stay  and  change  it. 
The  power  is  with  the  few.  The  death  of  the  old  order  is  declared. 


14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

LOAN  DEPT. 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below,  or 

on  the  date  to  which  renewed. 
Renewed  books  are  subject  to  immediate  recall. 


lift  21  1961 

T  T-»  01  A    KH     A  >c:n                                        General  Library 
University  of  California 

(A1724slO)476B                                                  Berkeley 

re  [4994 


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